Category: KevinMD

Physicians are not incentivzed to talk with patients on the phone

Talking to patients on the phone can be very efficient and quite rewarding, like when I called a worried patient today and told her that her chest CT showed an improving pneumonia and almost certainly no cancer, but a repeat scan some months down the r…

24 reasons to not vaccinate your kid

An excerpt from Stay Away From My ER, and other fun bits of wisdom. 1. You don’t like to be told what to do. Especially not by arrogant doctors, who act as if they know better, just because they’ve been through a few decades of training! 2. Your child …

Why specialty health care should go virtual

“Let’s take a look together,” was the start of a virtual clinical assessment that led to a primary care provider and a neurologist diagnosing a patient with Parkinson’s Disease. As the neurologist in that conversation, I had the opportunity to play a m…

MKSAP: 45-year-old man with anorexia, dizziness, and weakness

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 45-year-old man is evaluated for anorexia, dizziness, and weakness. He was discharged from the hospital 5 days ago after transsphenoidal pi…

When should you prescribe statins for older adults?

Although I have never been a big fan of modeling studies, viewing their appropriate role as hypothesis-generating rather than clinical decision-supporting, a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine deserves kudos for trying to do what neithe…

Why this physician supports Medicare for all

Alexa Karsdan’s medical bill for a sore throat reached over $28,000. NPR told her story recently, but I want you to know why I am actually glad this happened. Why is it good news that her charges were so exorbitant, and that her insurance paid over twe…

Why generations need to talk to each other

The words of the year as 2019 ends appear to be “OK Boomer” and “woke.” To this Boomer, it appears that the younger generation is blaming us for all the evil in the world, from their perch of “woke” moral superiority. They consider us to be out of touc…

Gratitude collateral: A little thanks can go a long way

In my recent post, “Why Gratitude Is A Superpower,” I told the story about a thank you note that my daughter, Maya, left me one morning for making her coffee. I was literally overcome with warmth and appreciation. My reaction demonstrates t…

Ironically, our first assigned patient encounter as medical students would be a corpse

“Death comes for all of us. It is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Dealing with the fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.” – Paul Kalanithi, MD Recently, first-year students of the medic…

Making humanism in medicine more humanistic

Kahlil Gibran writes, “In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.” What types of outcomes can physicians and patients achieve in healing, living, and life when Gibran’s mes…