Category: KevinMD

The 3 goals of clinical documentation

A lot has been spoken and written about clinical documentation already. In spite of that, many hospitals still struggle in getting the best out of their doctors when it comes to documentation quality. And although we can cite various reasons for this, …

5 reasons why physicians are prized financial targets

Doctors are notoriously bad with money.  Part of this has to do with the fact that the schools that prepare our future doctors are ill equipped to teach them about money.  When I was a fourth-year medical student, my school had a financial group come a…

When consumerism and convenience goes wild for no good reason

I have received several phone calls in the last few weeks from young adults requesting information about their last vaccinations. They are traveling to areas of the world that suggest or require certain vaccines and do not remember if they had them or …

A physician’s defense of active income

There are many blog posts, books, and podcasts out in the world celebrating “passive” income. I’ve even got a partner blog in the WCI Network completely dedicated to passive income. It’s time somebody stood up for the other side — active or earned inco…

When a physician attends the funeral of a patient

I stood at the doorway of the funeral home, a 26-year-old woman lying in the open casket off to the side. Standing out among the crowd of mourners was a tall man holding his one-year-old daughter, her curly locks of hair bouncing as he moved. It was on…

3 lessons this physician learned from her patients

I recently completed my internal medicine residency training.  Three years, thousands of hours, thousands of patients, thousands of decisions.  I certainly learned a lot from the past three years: everything from what “HFrEF” means and how to manage it…

A patient sues when a DNR is ignored

A New Mexico woman, suffering from Dercum’s disease (adiposis dolorosa) which causes painful fatty tumors, is suing a Santa Fe hospital and an emergency physician claiming she was the victim of two negligent acts in 2016. One, according to the Albuquer…

A medical student after an OB/GYN rotation: Here’s what he learned

On one of my first days on the labor and delivery ward, one of the attending obstetricians asked me what area of medicine I was interested in. When I said that I was applying into neurology this year, she said, “Ah! The other end of the body!” After a …

A medical student after an OB/GYN rotation: Here’s what he learned

On one of my first days on the labor and delivery ward, one of the attending obstetricians asked me what area of medicine I was interested in. When I said that I was applying into neurology this year, she said, “Ah! The other end of the body!” After a …

Electronic health records: separating the signal from the noise

5,177. That’s the current number of “cc’ed charts” as of this morning in my electronic health record in-basket. While it might sound like a lot, this is not at all an unusual accumulation, partly due to the fact that I receive a…