When my peanut-allergic son was five, he suddenly blurted out, “Mom, don’t worry about me, if I eat a peanut by mistake and it kills me, I can just hit the redo button and get another life, like in the video game.” I became really sca…
Category: KevinMD
Let’s stop trying to change what doctors do
Our organization, like most health care providers, is working hard to improve the care we provide to our patients, while also striving to improve the lives of our physicians. All too often, a narrow view of the former can create conflict with the latte…
The difference between shallow and deep work in medicine
“Let me order some labs, and then we’ll discuss where we go from there once I have the results.” I walk out of the patient’s room and right into one of my nurses. “Zoe, can we start that lady on pressors like we talked abo…
Hormone replacement therapy is still linked to cancer
It is a fluke of the news cycle that if we don’t hear a product warning frequently, we can “forgive” that product and think it has somehow become safe. While no one would “forgive” cigarettes, lead in drinking water or mer…
Physicians: Why you need a personal board of directors
Why do you need professional advisors? If you were the CEO of a company pulling in $15 million in top-line revenue, you wouldn’t be managing that organization by yourself, right? You’d have a team of trusted professional advisors in your &#…
Happiness has become a selfish pursuit
Earlier this month Ross Douthat wrote a piece in The New York Times titled “The Age of American Despair” where he posed the question “Are deaths from drugs and alcohol and suicide a political, economic or spiritual crisis?” Douthat writes: The working …
Treat the whole patient and do the right thing
Sometimes what makes truly great catchphrases, mission statements, and movie titles so powerful is that they are true, always necessary, and sometimes sufficient. I was reminded of this a few months back when a patient called into our telephonic urgen…
When a medical facility isn’t equipped to handle profound mental health issues
A person rolls into an outpatient clinic. A pleasant bleach smell emanates from freshly scrubbed chairs. Happy chatter about people’s lives, and this week’s health issues are dimmed by the local radio station playing in the background. The …
CBD oil: Natural does not mean it is safe
At the age of three months, Charlotte Figi had her first seizure. She was later diagnosed with Davet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. Her seizures continued, increasing in both frequency and severity. In a CNN interview, Charlotte’s mother Paige said…
Stand up and be heard. But don’t hate your doctor.
“I don’t know.” That is an answer patients hate to hear. It is also an answer doctors hate to utter, and in truth, many of us fail to say those words when it would be proper to say them. Doctors spent long hours over many years of training, sacrificing…
