Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 38-year-old woman is evaluated in follow-up after recent surgery for endometrial cancer. Her family history is significant for colon cancer in her sister (diagnosed at age 45 years) and her mother (diagnosed at age 65 years). Her maternal grandfather was […]
Category: KevinMD
The secret life of a nurse
This is based on a true story. The name and some details of the events have been changed. She was the smarter nurse who floated to ICU, to CVRU, to CCU. She could handle any crisis: balloon pumps, CRRT, open-heart patients, respiratory distress, code blues — anything. Sandy was quiet. She didn’t really have any […]
Is debt-free medical school a financial blunder for doctors?
Education can be expensive. Higher education can be even more costly. Even partial scholarships can be deceptive as one might opt for a more expensive school for the sake of redeeming “free money.” As a student, I had no financial understanding of return on investment when I was considering higher education. All in, I plowed […]
Doctors should let their patients’ religious beliefs shine
On one of my first days of medical school, I shuffled into a lecture hall surrounded by professional looking individuals as we had done the days before. This similar routine persisted for a few days as we became oriented to our new school. Leadership had indoctrinated us with professionalism, administrative staff had terrified us to […]
We should all care when patients get too many Z-paks
Many people seem to believe that the Z-pak possesses magical qualities. Patients come in requesting it for the common cold, because it worked for them in the past. Not only do many believe it cures the common cold, but they think it can treat any infection. Have a urinary tract infection? Just ask your doctor […]
The problem with first-person reporting of unproven interventions
Houston Chronicle reporter Craig Hlavaty recently treated readers to a first-person account of getting an intravenous (IV) vitamin infusion inside a van parked outside his house. The article, “Feeling the drip, drip, drip of the mobile IV craze,” related how a needle was inserted into his arm, “just where a tattooed lightning bolt strikes.” Hlavaty extolled the […]
Can empathy be taught to physicians?
We want competent physicians, but we also want compassionate ones. How do we get them? Is it nature or is it nurture? Is it more important to search out more compassionate students, or should we instill compassion somehow in the ones we start along the training pipeline? I think the answer lies in nurturing what […]
Nurses are always right. And 28 other tips for new residents.
This summer, new resident physicians begin their training all across the United States. Today, our future family physicians and pediatricians, neurosurgeons and emergency physicians, plastic surgeons and laser tattoo removal specialists (OK, not really a specialty, just a sideline) will begin learning how to be physicians, having completed four years of expensive college and four […]