“Does a rock float on water?” I asked the haggard woman lying in the ICU bed. I was an intern, in the first rotation of my medical residency, and Mrs. Jones had been my ICU team’s patient for the past week. Over that time, she’d…
Category: KevinMD
Average physicians are extraordinary
I am just another average physician. It wasn’t my first return from maternity leave, but this busy ED shift wasn’t going well. I kept putting off breast-pumping to complete “just one more thing.” Then my son’s school secretary called. I had told our na…
Is this cost-saving Medicare proposal doomed?
The Trump administration has proposed that insurance plans providing drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries will no longer be forced to cover six hitherto “protected” drug classes. The classes — which include drugs for psychiatric conditio…
68 laws of the ER
1. Murphy’s Law as it applies to the ER: If something can go bad, it will do so in a hurry. If it can’t possibly go bad, it will still find a way. 2. Clock’s First Rule: All the patients will crash at the same time. Usually when the computer system goe…
Medical school isn’t like an Instagram feed
For some reason, social media does a good job with sculpting our lives into perfectly organized displays that are available to look at during every breathing second of our lives thanks to the revolutionary invention called the smartphone. I look at pic…
Go quiet into the night
I know what you’re thinking: She’s cold-hearted, cruel, and unkind. But am I? Or are you? Grandma Lilly is 87-years-old and in the ICU. She’s on a ventilator with her wrists restrained to the side of the bed. Grandma can barely see because her eyes are…
The myths and truths about med-peds physicians
Yes, med-peds is a real residency! It is a real specialty! And it is a practicing profession by many physicians today! It can open doors for so many wonderful professional opportunities. It is a discipline that can provide patients and communities extr…
My family was traumatized twice by the death of my dad
Part 1 of a series. The battle I walk into my parents’ home to pick my mom up for a family gathering. And like most days over the past few weeks, palpable sorrow greets me at the door. Our old dog lies sleeping on the couch, heavy with years, she’s dif…
My family was traumatized twice by the death of my dad
Part 1 of a series. The battle I walk into my parents’ home to pick my mom up for a family gathering. And like most days over the past few weeks, palpable sorrow greets me at the door. Our old dog lies sleeping on the couch, heavy with years, she’s dif…
The generational differences of physicians
It is a known fact, but every generation feels that they had it worst and that other generations have it made. “When I went to school we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways!” says every grandparent I identify myself with the Generation…
