In honor of Black History Month, I wrote this article to say thank you to all the wonderful black doctors breaking boundaries and exploring careers that would have been unattainable to black people in late 1800 and even early 1900 America. To all the b…
Legislators have found a new way to insert themselves into the physician-patient relationship. In October and November 2019, news stories regarding a parental dispute over the treatment of a transgender child prompted legislators in Texas, Kentucky, an…
Let’s talk about the doctor who is excessively defensive. I divide this kind of communication blocker into two varieties: physician personality and physician mode of practice. The physician with a defensive personality is one who interprets quest…
The fertility clinic waiting room is a space where many people will find themselves at some point in their lives. In spite of cheery music, shared success stories, infertility awareness weeks, and positive media campaigns, this can be a challenging and…
The fertility clinic waiting room is a space where many people will find themselves at some point in their lives. In spite of cheery music, shared success stories, infertility awareness weeks, and positive media campaigns, this can be a challenging and…
The front-desk clerk, Ruth, comes to me and says Rose Henderson wants a cab voucher signed — which guaranteed payment. Rose could not be made to understand, Ruth tells me, that we are not permitted to sign vouchers when the person, the client, comes to…
I recently wrote about my new type 1 diabetes diagnosis, the quest for affordable meds and supplies, and the subsequent financial savings found through transparent pricing outside of my insurance plan. I summarized that health care “coverage̶…
Do you think I went too far in my last blog post, calling out some journalists as “pontificating parasites” who love nothing more than to slam physicians and blame us for the cost of health care? If you do, then you must not have read Elisabeth Rosenth…
Ever since the publication of the infamous 2016 BMJ opinion piece claiming medical error should be considered the third leading cause of death in the U.S., the debate on the true incidence of deaths caused by medical error has been raging. Many, includ…
In my very first job as a doctor — working in a London hospital in the 1980s. I always took a ridiculously detailed past medical history for every patient I saw. I started to notice how many elderly women had had septicemia, a life-threatening infectio…
