I flash a smile as I look up from my notes. “Do it again,” I say, encouraged by his progress, “but this time start with the physical exam.” I am the internal medicine resident leading our “twilight” admitting team, and Vikram, a student on the first day of his medicine clerkship, sits across from me. […]
My country rotation as a medical student was overshadowed by a heated argument between the general practitioner and his wife. She was sacrificing her life in this “hole of a place” and angrily stormed out to visit her children in boarding school in the city. Decades later, I now understand the frustration and challenges of […]
I have a confession. I didn’t enter my profession to help people. I know. It’s shocking. Don’t get me wrong. I take my professional responsibility extremely seriously. I’m only admitting that the primary reason for choosing my profession was not altruistic. I made a practical decision to go down this path because of a junior […]
About two years ago, I made a big career move — I took a leap of faith. I left full-time clinical practice as a neonatologist to become a national medical director for a neonatal resource team. The job was appealing because it was a new challenge for me. I had the opportunity to use my […]
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com powered by Health eCareers. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are both advanced-practice providers with considerable autonomy, but they’re not interchangeable. Each brings something slightly different to the table, and if your practice is considering hiring an advanced-level practitioner, it’s important to understand the differences so you can hire appropriately […]
This past week was one of those weeks looming ahead of me that I was already dreading as I entered into it. I was to be working through another holiday and following a string of nights, and I would have a quick turnaround into a mid-shift. As a nocturnist by choice, I rarely work mornings […]
“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” –Robert Gary Lee One of the recurring expressions I heard throughout training, from preceptors and attendings to doctors ignoring a lowly medical student/resident eating lunch in the doctor’s lounge, was: “I’m living the dream.” It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was a code meaning […]
As a teaching clinician in an internal medicine residency program, it is safe to say that September is one of the more exciting and busier times of the academic year. Walking through the hallways of our department, we encounter bright-eyed fourth-year medical students scurrying about in a frenzy as they make some big decisions about […]
I saw two patients with a chief complaint of bubbles in their urine this month. One middle-aged woman had eaten some wild mushrooms she was pretty sure she had identified correctly, but once her urine turned bubbly a few days later, she came in to make sure her kidneys were OK. Even though she was […]
I practiced general internal medicine from June 1979 until November 2003. Immediately after training, I became an employed physician of an older internist covering my employer’s patients and building my practice for two years before embarking on my own. I saw 20 or more patients per day in addition to providing hospital care and visiting […]
