Throughout my career, I’ve contemplated what it means to be a good doctor. While I still cannot fully articulate it, I know a good doctor when I see one. She’s the masterful diagnostician who can solve any medical mystery. He’s the ph…
Category: KevinMD
Stop penalizing physicians with pay for performance
Throughout my career, I’ve contemplated what it means to be a good doctor. While I still cannot fully articulate it, I know a good doctor when I see one. She’s the masterful diagnostician who can solve any medical mystery. He’s the ph…
A physician shares the computer screen with patients
I ran late the other morning. My first patient, an internal transfer, was already waiting. Booting up my laptop seemed to take forever. Usually, I try to poke around at least a little in the EMR before I enter the exam room, even when I know the patien…
Why this doctor decided to run for political office
The practice of medicine is limited by what we can control. As students, we are taught to believe in the power of science, the importance of hard work, and the momentum of technological advancement as prime determinants in our patients’ outcomes. Howev…
Why this doctor decided to run for political office
The practice of medicine is limited by what we can control. As students, we are taught to believe in the power of science, the importance of hard work, and the momentum of technological advancement as prime determinants in our patients’ outcomes. Howev…
Doing extra for a patient or overstepping boundaries?
I wanted to go the extra mile for my patient. The resistance I found was unexpected. She was young. Her life — an incredible journey in diplomatic circles — was crippled too soon by a recurring disease that would ultimately prevail. Day after day, I…
Warning: The medical system is fragile. And that’s OK.
Because everything around us usually works, it can be easy to forget how fragile some of the workings are. My patients see this with their bodies, as they fail, but not so apparent to them are the fragilities of the health care system that we doctors g…
Don’t ask me about your husband’s flatulence if he’s not my patient. Bring him in instead.
Doctors dispense medical advice. That’s what we do. Folks come to our office with various medical issues. We talk to them. We poke around some of their body parts. Then, we exercise our medical judgment. We might order a CT scan. We might prescribe stu…
Corporate games have ruined the health care system
There are certain paradoxes of life that are beyond the realm of rational explanation. To me, one of such is that a country that figured out how to defy gravity and conquered the cosmos has time and time again proven to be incapable of taking care of t…
My name is not “Med Student”
“I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names; he says they are natural and not conventional; […] that there is a truth or correctness in them.” – Plato I once heard that the sound of one’s …
