Like many of us, I have been struggling to reconcile my love for everything good about this country with the senseless gun violence that terrorizes us today. In the wake of each shooting, I vow to do more — to speak up as a surgeon, as a former victim of gun violence and simply as […]
One of the great myths amongst residents is that once they become attendings, they’ll have so much more free time. I’ll never work this much again, they think. This is the most time-intensive phase of life, and everything after residency is easy in comparison. Unfortunately, they are usually wrong. Statistically, working about the same number […]
Quality of life matters. This straightforward assertion gets complicated when we discuss the treatment of depression. Depression is common, part of a family doctor’s daily schedule; it can affect anyone, although certain groups are at higher risk. There have been many hypotheses as to why we as a species are susceptible to depression (and its […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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? […]
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? […]
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 […]
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 […]
