“Remember that patient you saw?” What a horrible question that always was. You came to work, and a friend would come up to you quietly and take you aside. “Remember that guy yesterday with the chest pain?” “Mr. Hayes?̶…
Category: KevinMD
8 things to watch for if you, or a family member, is hospitalized
Hospitals are busy, hectic, and unpredictable places. Professionals who work in health care are highly trained and competent individuals, and if you are receiving acute care in America — the standard of your treatment and access to high-quality t…
A love-hate relationship with the resume-guided voice
In medical school, I’m having a hard time choosing among extracurricular activities. Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that our mandatory classes are hard enough for me to manage. On top of managing coursework, I feel an enormous pressure to q…
How can we fix the research bias from industry sponsorship?
Late last year the New York Times reported that Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, had resigned for failing to disclose his conflicts of interest at professional meetings and in scientific and medical…
Do not take online physician reviews at face value
My friend and practice advisor showed me two very negative anonymous reviews of my practice this week. Both were posted within a one-month winter period and were written about family members. They were not written by patients. My staff and I tried dili…
What distinguishes good physicians from truly seasoned medical professionals?
One thing that gastroenterologists know about is stool. But, I’m not referring to that kind of stool in this post. Follow along. When we do a colonoscopy, for example, we are relying upon stool, or more accurately a stool, as in a three-legged stool. T…
Why aren’t doctors rich?
In the 1960s, Lew Goldberg showed that a physician’s intuition and judgment can be fatally flawed. Interestingly, the same fatal flaw that was exposed by Goldberg is the same fatal flaw that causes some of the biggest financial mistakes that doctors m…
3 ways to advance the credibility of online health information
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal late last month, the war against anti-vaccination propaganda now has a new battlefront. Pinterest, the social-media platform where users discover images and information, has begun blocking vaccine-related se…
Doctors shouldn’t have to find side gigs. Here’s why many do.
Thanks to the internet, collaboration has never been so easy. If you need to learn about how to install a new irrigation system in your lawn, the resources are a few clicks away. You just need the time and motivation to make happen. On the medicine …
Why this physician chose to specialize in infectious disease
Forgive the autobiographical nature of this post, but here’s a recap on how I started down the path to becoming an infectious disease (ID) doctor. To begin, understand that my first year of medical school was rough going. In hindsight, this wasn’t surp…
