A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. The aim of medical education is not only to transfer scientific knowledge, but also impart the wisdom accumulated over the long history of medicine that equips us to apply …
For many months, artificial intelligence has been in my peripheral vision, just sitting there, ignored by me because it seemed too far in the future to be interesting now. And then, there were all these terms — Big Data, machine learning, data science …
I met Mr. B during my week on the endocrine service of my internal medicine rotation. My attending told me we were being consulted for this patient’s high sugars and a foot ulcer, and asked me to take the history. I walked into Mr. B’s room and was imm…
I see several patients daily with cancer. Some days can be tough, but nothing compares to what they are going through. I know that. The physical anguish and toll that chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery can take on the body. The burden that the diseas…
The evolving politics of single-payer health care conflate the concepts of universal coverage, health care on demand and free health care. To the indiscriminate progressive mind, all three are part of the holy grail. The fly in the ointment is that hig…
First, the cancer diagnosis. Then, the barrage of trite encouragements: You can beat this! Don’t give up. Keep fighting! It’s not only friends and family members who utter these clichés — usually at a loss of what else to say. Health care providers als…
Pay for performance (P4P) is all the rage in health care. Big Pharma led the way, and the popular press would have you believe that one can “incentivize” physicians and their clinical colleagues with as little as a sandwich and a bag of chips. Corporat…
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. The #MeToo movement exploded into the national spotlight in October 2017 with The New York Times exposé of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood media mogul Harvey Weinstein. It has since encour…
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 40-year-old man is evaluated for a new skin rash of 10 days’ duration. The rash appeared abruptly and is not tender or pruritic. The …
Well, today it happened. I participated in my first code. We were in the telemetry unit (the room where they monitor all the patients who have EKG strips) to ask about a different patient of mine only to find that a patient was coding (lost a life-sust…
