Just like you, I’m trying to make sense of the world around me. But there are no templates for the bridge that health care’s building for its future. All we can do is listen to weak signals and amplify them. Recently (and finally), CVS boug…
Category: KevinMD
In medicine, what’s in a name?
Before I could see her, I could hear her. My patient, a young woman with messy braided hair, was grunting with every effort to breathe. The noises quieted slightly when I reached her bedside, but her tears continued to fall between gasps. Her body move…
Another chance to practice self-compassion
It’s Monday morning, and I’m the attending physician starting a week of inpatient service in the hospital. On my patient list is a man named Earl, age ninety-one. He’s outlived his siblings, his first and second wives and all of his p…
6 things learned from being rejected from medical school
I have spent the greater portion of my 20s enduring a premature quarter-life crisis. Patterns of self-doubt and debilitating anxiety became my new normal. I was rejected from medical school — again. After taking time to process the reality that I would…
Do smaller, independent practices have happier doctors?
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. Physician burnout is not a novel topic within the health care industry. Numerous studies have been done on the increasing prevalence of its symptoms — from emotional exhaustion and loss of empathy to…
MKSAP: 65-year-old woman with a cardiac murmur
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 65-year-old woman is evaluated during a routine examination. She was diagnosed with a cardiac murmur in early adulthood. She is active, hea…
Do huddles really help in primary care?
I’ve huddled since before we used the word for it: You want to be prepared for the patients coming in that day. “Followup MRI” – did they have it and what did it show? “Ankle pain” – do we have X-ray today? “Eye pain” – be sure to check her acuity and …
Patients are an integral part of medical student education
A face feels nothing like a frozen pig’s foot, I thought, as I guided a curved needle into the woman’s cheek, drawing the absorbable thread across her still-bleeding wound. Two wraps around the needle driver and I pulled the nearly invisible thread thr…
How customer service breeds bad medicine
“Welcome to our clinic. May we take your order?” Many patients have Googled, Yahoo’ed or Bing’ed their symptoms way before I even lay eyes on them in an examining room. And they have a schema of what they’ll be getting out of the visit. If …
We have a shot at preventing cervical cancer
Many people think eradicating cancer is unattainable. But for cervical cancer, we are well on our way to doing just that. Cervical cancer was once the leading cause of death in women in the U.S. But we are on the cusp of vanquishing this disease thanks…
