Practicing medicine at the frontlines is hard. It’s damn hard. Every minute you need to be alert, ready to respond to a potential life or death situation, and be called to another important problem. The current medical practice environment — with…
Category: KevinMD
Why many doctors live paycheck to paycheck
Wealth seems to be an elusive dream for many people. They desire to become wealthy, but feel they don’t earn enough money to reach that goal, as if earning more would make the difference. A study of 10,000 millionaires presented in Chris Hogan’s new bo…
The difference between learning medicine and doing medicine
Back when I was a third-year medical student, I would sometimes bike to the hospital campus early enough to catch the groundskeepers cleaning the promenade in front of the medical school before the foot traffic arrived. Discovery Walk, as it’s called, …
Is the physician financial independence community preaching to the choir?
Proof of concept is important because accountability is a tenuous thing. One can pretty much say whatever they want on the internet. They can boast. Spin half-truths. Tell a tale. The most deadly of these are the ones that are just a slight variation o…
Teaching medical professionalism through literature
A excerpt from From Reading to Healing: Teaching Medical Professionalism through Literature (Literature and Medicine). There are several traditional ways to teach about professionalism. Some training programs have didactic lectures on this issue. These…
Teaching medical professionalism through literature
A excerpt from From Reading to Healing: Teaching Medical Professionalism through Literature (Literature and Medicine). There are several traditional ways to teach about professionalism. Some training programs have didactic lectures on this issue. These…
The tide is turning: a pro-vaccine Facebook thread
People often say that they can die happy if … Well, I have no intention of dying, but one of my goals in life was achieved recently. Historically, Facebook moms groups have been the bane of existence for many physicians, particularly pediatricians. We …
Refuse to accept that burnout is a natural experience in health care
Burnout is a myth. Dedicated clinicians, working under circumstances that connect their skills and compassion with opportunities to impact patients, won’t experience burnout any more often than they might by doing other jobs. The story we tell — …
The story of an attending’s empathy
“Hey, you’re a med student. Right?” “Yes, I am. Do you need me to scrub in?” “That would be wonderful, yes! Everyone is either out on vacation or is sick. It’s just me and the resident.” “OK, I̵…
America has seen medical marijuana before: This is what we learned (and forgot)
Very few things in the universe are 100 percent good or 100 percent bad. Cannabis is perfectly ordinary in having a mixture of good qualities (medical benefits) and bad qualities (medical risks). The people who want to make money – lots of money, by th…
