2019 is here. I started my year by doing an urgent care shift on New Year’s day. It was not quite as busy as I expected; most of the shifts I’ve done around the holidays were high-volume, with lots of flu, other respiratory infections, and…
Category: KevinMD
How physicians can successfully wind down their practice
A retirement plan isn’t usually a top priority for fresh doctors looking for their first jobs, whether that final date is in five years or thirty. Perhaps knowing when to hang up your hat is immaterial so early in your career since most doctors will en…
How carefully do most patients or doctors read medical forms?
Does any living, breathing human believe that there is not enough paperwork in our lives? While we are all burdened, I believe that the medical profession is uniquely deluged with an absurd volume of documentation requirements, most of which should be …
Countering misinformation about flu vaccine: Why it’s so hard
Many Americans hold beliefs about the flu vaccine that are at odds with the best available scientific evidence. For example, a recent study found that more than two-fifths, or 43 percent, of Americans believe that the seasonal flu vaccine can give us t…
Horrific decisions that no parent should ever have to make
“Is she in pain?” I asked quietly as the pearlescent baby-shaped image on the screen folded its legs and then extended them. The radiologist doing my ultrasound had just finished pointing out a cluster of alarming abnormalities in our devel…
Patient care suffers when you squeeze patients into a tight schedule
86 minutes. That’s what I found when I added up how late patients were through a single practice session earlier in the week. Some patients arrived on time, and some a few minutes early, but the average was about 8 minutes late, ranging up to one…
3 things this physician wished he could have done differently
“What took you so long? I’d have thought you would address this issue sooner.” I felt a like a scolded child sitting in the principal’s office. In fact, the small couch I was sitting on rested nearly a foot lower than the chair on which he perched. All…
We need to be more focused on those patients who find the holidays hard
I am beginning to think that we should not see chronic care patients between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. It just makes us look bad. Our quality metrics make the last blood pressure and the previous diabetic lab test of the year for each of our pat…
New year, new thinking about treating obesity
Eat less, exercise more is a common refrain heard by millions of people with obesity. If only it were that simple. Decades of research shows obesity is a disease that is caused by a combination of genetic, environmental, biological, and behavioral fact…
When medicine stays in the family
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. It’s no secret that some businesses are family businesses and medicine is no exception. The anonymous Northern California cardiologist known as “Dads Dollars Debts” confesses in a b…
