Category: KevinMD

Education as an intervention for the chronic pain epidemic

A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Chronic pain is a silent epidemic Chronic pain is a significant public health burden, but one that is not talked about enough. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine estimated that approximately 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. But chronic pain is not just a […]

Education as an intervention for the chronic pain epidemic

A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Chronic pain is a silent epidemic Chronic pain is a significant public health burden, but one that is not talked about enough. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine estimated that approximately 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. But chronic pain is not just a […]

We need the time to apply our noticing skills to our patients

Noticing. If you think about it, that’s really a lot of what we do a lot of the time. As clinicians, we are trained as observers to notice, to use our eyes, our ears, our hands. To notice. We notice that our patients seem different today. More tired. A little pale. Notice a change in […]

Why more physicians should enter industry

Attend any biotech or health informatics conference and one thing becomes clear: the scarcity of physicians. Entrepreneurs, businessmen, angel investors, and software engineers swarm these conferences — and their encompassing companies — all the while the imperative persona in this realm remains tied up behind a dysfunctional EHR or in an overbooked operating room. Why? […]

Why more physicians should enter industry

Attend any biotech or health informatics conference and one thing becomes clear: the scarcity of physicians. Entrepreneurs, businessmen, angel investors, and software engineers swarm these conferences — and their encompassing companies — all the while the imperative persona in this realm remains tied up behind a dysfunctional EHR or in an overbooked operating room. Why? […]

The choice between medicine and nursing

An excerpt from The Choice: Medicine vs. Nursing. An extensive amount of data now exists in the science of choice.  Social researchers such as David Kahneman and Dan Ariely have conducted numerous experiments which suggest a number of ways in which humans are led astray when making choices.  An understanding some of these pitfalls is critical […]

Celebrity suicides make the irony of our era clear

These recent weeks have been hard for me, and I suspect for a lot of other people as well. Not because I spent it in a board review course listening to lectures for 12 hours a day, and not because I drank enough coffee to practically burn a hole in my stomach, but because the […]

MKSAP: 70-year-old man with a transient ischemic attack

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 70-year-old man is admitted to the hospital with a 1-hour episode of left arm and left leg weakness. He is diagnosed with a transient ischemic attack. The patient has a history of hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus and a […]

10 tips every young physician should read

How do I balance my home life with physician life? I really want to do a research study. How do I start? How do I get involved in my specialties society? I am overwhelmed with clinical duties. How do I negotiate for nonclinical time? My manuscript was rejected. What should I do next? I had […]

A patient is left with a choice: financial devastation or blindness

That statement from a recent patient was a summary to me of what is bad in our health care “system.”  It’s a terrible summary of what is seen all over this country with people who must make the choice between financial solvency and health. Here’s what happened:  It was a new patient I saw, who […]