Today’s medicine is not the medicine I signed up for. I am a Xennial. Sandwiched between generation X and millennials, I don’t really belong to either. I didn’t grow up with the technological advancements that the millennial generatio…
Category: KevinMD
Do physicians feel guilt and embarrassment more often than they admit?
I was an intern, doing a rotation in the coronary care unit (CCU) of a large urban hospital. It was very challenging: The patients had complex medical issues, and my fellow residents and I were given lots of responsibility for their care. Still, I felt…
These medical students support Medicare for all. Here’s why.
The most difficult part of our first year of medical school wasn’t memorizing anatomy or mastering the patient interview, but seeing firsthand how broken our current health care system is. We pay twice as much as other wealthy nations for health care, …
MKSAP: 64-year-old woman with severe COPD
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 64-year-old woman is evaluated during a posthospital visit for severe COPD with an FEV1 of 30% of predicted. She has been admitted three ti…
Is medicine really a model family-friendly profession?
An article in the New York Times touting medicine as a family-friendly profession has stirred up critics who say it denies the reality of career sacrifice and gaps in leadership and pay that female physicians face. Writer Claire Cain Miller profiled fe…
Should hospital systems post physician salaries?
One of my coworkers who grew up in India told me that their teachers in grade school would post everyone’s scores in the hallway after every exam. This comparison of grades and objective testing further extended to cities and even regions in the count…
Doctors have little clue about what actually goes on in their colleagues’ offices
When I meet patients in the office, our conversations do not focus exclusively on the medical issue at hand. Of course, if you come to see me with a stomach ache, at some point, I will direct the dialogue toward your abdomen. Often, our conversations a…
3 myths about financial freedom
Every July, we have some time to think about our independence and freedom. We also celebrate and spend time to be grateful for those that helped us achieve that. Everyone reading this certainly has a lot to be grateful for. But I also know that there a…
Will separating obstetrics from gynecology help specialist burnout?
At the end of a long table covered with hors d’oeuvres and a birthday cake, I struck up a conversation with three primary care physicians. I was hungry for their opinions. Inside the crowded apartment, we spoke for some 20 minutes about the systemic an…
What to consider before undergoing stem cell treatment or banking stem cells
It can be difficult to tease out the evidence-based science amidst the claims of successful adult stem cell-based treatments for a range of health problems from joint pain to Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, and spinal cord injury. Even a num…
