“Pathognomonia.” I do not believe this is a real word. That’s OK. I don’t care if it isn’t. I have wanted to write this little blurb several times over a period of a few years. My theme is related to what we physicians regard as pathognomon…
Category: KevinMD
The demonization of socialized medicine
Of late, doctor/friends on social media have taken to reposting news articles detailing the horrors taking place in other nations because of the evil scourge known as socialized medicine. In fact, the two words, alone or together, just don’t carry anyt…
The day he stopped pretending to be sick
From second through fifth grade, I mastered the art of being sick. I got out of school, soccer practice and piano lessons so that I could be the child I wanted to be — not sick, but loved, cared for. Here was my recipe: 1. Wake up. 2. Feel anxious abou…
Does coffee lead to cardiac arrhythmias?
Coffee —”because of the caffeine which it holds,” described Dr. Henry Elsner in a 1911 review article in the journal of Hypertension and Arteriosclerosis — causes “increased rapidity of the heart’s action. It makes the heart irr…
12 things you’ll need for a smooth credentialing process
Physicians receive rigorous medical training for the better part of a decade. However, we emerge unprepared for the real-world job application process to which our friends in other professions are accustomed. One of these logistics includes credentiali…
A physician was barred from attending any future IT meetings
In the mid-1990s, I was working as the medical director for a national computer processing company that had the medical policy and utilization review contract for many Medicaid programs in the United States. Within the first few weeks of being hired, I…
Take care of you so that you can make a difference for others
A few years ago, after doing the work and mom thing for five-plus years, I noticed I was becoming increasingly cynical. I was, more often than not, in a bad mood — and I felt exhausted. One day I sat down and asked myself: “What the hell is going on wi…
The 3 goals of clinical documentation
A lot has been spoken and written about clinical documentation already. In spite of that, many hospitals still struggle in getting the best out of their doctors when it comes to documentation quality. And although we can cite various reasons for this, …
5 reasons why physicians are prized financial targets
Doctors are notoriously bad with money. Part of this has to do with the fact that the schools that prepare our future doctors are ill equipped to teach them about money. When I was a fourth-year medical student, my school had a financial group come a…
When consumerism and convenience goes wild for no good reason
I have received several phone calls in the last few weeks from young adults requesting information about their last vaccinations. They are traveling to areas of the world that suggest or require certain vaccines and do not remember if they had them or …
