The mission of medicine is to heal the sick. When cure is elusive, it is to relieve distress, and always to comfort. All of us who became physicians had our reasons, but we had to have a genuine interest and ability in science, and an appreciation of…
In medicine, there are those patients that know they have a morbid underlying diagnosis, and no doctor can convince them otherwise. And there are also those that know they are perfectly well and need no treatment, and no doctor can convince them otherw…
In the book The Insanity of God, the writer had been an American missionary to Somalia during the late 1980s through early ’90s. This was a time when there was no place on earth with greater needs, hardships, suffering, and dying. It truly was he…
Doctors have a few dirty little secrets. We have the highest rates of suicide amongst all professions and are in desperate need of mental health reform. For those who don’t know what it’s like to work in this area, it can be difficult to un…
Recently, one of my clinic patients asked me to administer his intramuscular medication injection. I appreciated the vote of confidence but had to tell him he was mistaken in thinking that my skill would surpass that of our nurses’. “Trust me,” I told …
When I’m working in the hospital, I always find it interesting talking to patients about their medical history and experiences with outpatient physicians. I recently wrote about our broken primary care system. In fact, I’ll be stronger than that: Our p…
What if I had access to real solutions? What if I had resources to provide to a person to help them overcome their problem? As a primary care provider with over 20 years of experience, I know viscerally that I will never “fix” anyone. I can teach, I c…
Summer marks a flood of young new attendings hitting hospitals all over the country. There will also be many doctors whose first contract is coming to an end, and they are moving to a new position. Both of these scenarios create an opportunity to make …
Words can be misleading. Medical terms work really well when shared between clinicians. But we can’t assume our patients speak the same language we do. If we “run with” whatever keywords we pick up from our patient’s chief complaint, we can easily get …
“Yoga therapy differs from contemporary yoga in that the profession has a defined scope of practice based on educational standards and accreditation requirements for training schools and yoga therapists. In dealing with pain conditions, certified…
