The Kaiser Health News article, “Spurred By Convenience, Millennials Often Spurn The ‘Family Doctor’ Model,” caught my eye. Millennial patients want “convenience, fast service, connectivity, and price transparency” while doctors and health experts worry about “fragmented or unnecessary care, including the misuse of antibiotics” and loss of “care that is coordinated and longitudinal.” It’s as […]
On a Saturday morning, Michael, a physician, was making his way through the hospital atrium after his weekend rounds. On his way out, he noticed a family he knew well. They were talking quietly and appeared distraught. He asked them if they were okay. They said that the husband’s mother had been admitted overnight with […]
There is a man. He is in my house. I don’t know where he came from. But he just came into my house. And now he is living there. And I am afraid of him. I do not know who he is. There is a man in my house. I am so scared. I don’t […]
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 30-year-old woman is evaluated for a 2-month history of diarrhea with three to five loose stools per day. She has mild abdominal cramps, bloating, intermittent nausea, and mild anorexia that has resulted in the loss of 2.3 kg (5.0 lb). […]
An excerpt from Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuse$: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Your Career With a Healthy Heart. The details of the careers and tragic deaths of these CEOs are a matter of public record, and the disruption that followed their deaths was enormous. Take Ranjan Das, for example. At age forty-two, he was the […]
An excerpt from Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuse$: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Your Career With a Healthy Heart. The details of the careers and tragic deaths of these CEOs are a matter of public record, and the disruption that followed their deaths was enormous. Take Ranjan Das, for example. At age forty-two, he was the […]
Cancer is the enemy. So, our immediate desire is to get rid of it, throw it away, and never hear from it again. Current therapies that require living tissue are proving that false. We know that your living tumor tissue is like your fingerprint, unique to each individual patient. It contains information specific to you, […]
An excerpt from How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (Second Edition). Copyright 2018 by Toni Bernhard. Excerpted with permission from Wisdom Publications. In the years since I’ve been chronically ill, more essential to me than formal meditation has been mindfulness outside of meditation. Mindfulness refers to paying attention […]
“Passion isn’t a path in the woods. It is the woods.” -Tom Robbins, “Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas” I’ve met plenty of accidental physicians. These have been photographers, travel writers, artists, outdoor guides and chefs who awoke one day to find themselves doctoring. Their passions didn’t die — they were just delayed by lifestyle choices. […]
Late one Friday night while walking the long and lonely hallways of my hospital, my mind wandered back several years. I recalled my first weekend call as an eager, newly minted nephrology attending. I had met one of my colleagues earlier that morning in the doctors’ lounge, whereupon I had been handed a clunky, black […]
