On May 15, President Trump attempted to kill not just two, but three birds with one tweet, simultaneously denouncing the Media and the Mueller investigation, and crowing about his approval ratings. “Can you believe that with all of the made up, unsourced stories I get from the Fake News Media, together with the $10,000,000 Russian […]
Category: KevinMD
Which of these patients should get a liver transplant?
People with liver failure and cirrhosis die every year because there are not enough livers available. Who should receive the treasured life-saving organ? There is an organ allocation system in place, which has evolved over time, which ranks patients who need liver transplants. Without such a system, there would be confusion and chaos. How can […]
Don’t worry, medical students don’t judge
Everybody gets nervous at the doctor’s office. Physicians ask all sorts of personal questions about what people eat, how much they drink, and how things are at home. Even questions that would seem completely harmless in another context — such as how work is going, or what hobbies a person enjoys — seem surrounded by […]
Close the gender pay gap in medicine
On June 10, 1963, the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy, amending the previous Fair Labor Standards Act. Under this law, pay disparities between men and women were clearly prohibited. More than fifty-five years later, women are still fighting to be paid the same as men holding the same […]
MKSAP: 68-year-old man with heart failure
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 68-year-old man is evaluated at a follow-up appointment. He has a 7-year history of heart failure secondary to ischemic cardiomyopathy. Over the past 6 months, he has had three hospitalizations for exacerbations of his heart failure. He currently has exertional […]
How today’s EMRs are like self-driving cars
Drivers are distracted klutzes and computers could obviously do better. Self-driving cars will make all of us safer on he road. Doctors have spotty knowledge and keep illegible records. EMRs with decision support will improve the quality of healthcare. The parallels are obvious. And so far the outcomes are disappointing on both fronts of our […]
These are the 3 financial enemies of physicians
Physicians are notorious for being bad with money. Today we’re going to assign some blame for that phenomenon. Physician finances have three enemies, and we’re going to expose them today. 1. Financial professionals Enemy number one consists of many members of the financial industry. These “helpers” are often part of the problem. One of the […]
3 things patients really want from their doctors
The doctor-patient interaction is the absolute core of clinical medicine. Maybe I’ll go much further: it’s the core of health care in general. I always try to remember, whenever I’m ever feeling frustrated with the system, the crazy bureaucracy — and of course, the debacle of our clunky electronic medical records and their data entry […]