When I first announced my boyfriend and I were engaged, I was met with follow up questions. “When is the wedding?” “How did he do it?” And, inevitably, “Will you be taking his last name?” My reply to the latter was often met with a furled brow. I heard, “I am surprised you of all […]
I’m a pathologist and the main way I communicate to the outside world — to your doctor and ultimately to you, the patient is via the pathology report. But the short missives I send from behind the microscope lack any excitement and can fall short of full communication. Here’s the usual story: Skin left scapula, […]
All have to wait. As is normal with the busy ER, the ambient noises of machines, alarms ringing, painful moaning, and loud drunken outbursts permeate the department. It’s a controlled chaos. But, a woman’s scream pierced my soul. Her baby eight-month-old boy laid limp in her arms. He’s already pale, lips blue, his chest not […]
The announcement that the next iteration of the Apple Watch can both monitor the wearer’s heart rhythm and, if a suspicious reading emerges, perform an electrocardiogram, could be a boon for users and their doctors. Or it could be a massive headache for the health care system. The new watch continuously monitors the wearer’s heart rate. It […]
So many moving parts. Just last week, a patient I’ve cared for over 20 years came to see me, and she was despondent over a number of issues. First and foremost was that her partner of over 60 years has had progressive dementia, and finally things got so bad that he had to be transferred […]
Every few months, there happens to be another breathless news story about racism in health care. Mass media seems shocked, progressives angrily tweet, while conservatives claim that somehow it was all President Obama’s fault. Meanwhile, the four relatively unknown and certainly underappreciated historically black college or university (HBCU) medical schools in the United States (Howard […]
Informed consent is the cornerstone of medical ethics. And every physician must defend this sacred principle from every form of evil that would seek to dismantle, degrade and debase it. If informed consent is the sun, then privacy, confidentiality, dignity, and trust are planets that go around it. For without informed consent, the descent of […]
An excerpt from the Docs Outside the Box podcast, episode 4: Financial Ed. for Docs 101 Dr. Nii: All right, everyone. Welcome to another episode of “Docs Outside the Box.” We have a treat for you today. Today, we’re going to be interviewing Katie Brewer, CFP, and owner of Your Richest Life. Katie, thank you […]
Few things in primary care give patient and doctor mutual and instant gratification. It’s been a while since I reduced a “nursemaid’s elbow” or a spontaneous shoulder dislocation other than my own, or a finger dislocation, but those all count. I once wrote about curing deafness in a man with a movement disorder by flushing ear […]
Guess what? You’re surrounded by rich doctors. You probably didn’t even know it. You know why? Because doctors don’t talk about that filthy lucre known as money. So while you’re assuming that all the other doctors in your group, office building, and hospital are in the same position as you, you’re wrong. Some of them are rich. There […]
