An excerpt from The Real Drama—Incredible Medicine. It was an ordinary day in my family medicine practice many years ago. A variety of patients, many longstanding and from various generations of whole families, were filling the waiting room. Back then,…
“Are there specific ways empathy will be tested in the standardized patient exam?” a medical school classmate of mine earnestly asked following a lecture years ago. I laughed, thinking that teaching empathy was impossible. As an optimistic and naive me…
“I feel like I have to educate my doctors about my gender identity and transgender health-related needs, including insurance coverage,” my transgender male patient, V, told me on interview. A series of interviews with V for a community outreach project…
I am a board-certified pediatrician, wife, mother of four, and host of a podcast. I have been interested in nutrition and feeding practices for as long as I can remember. In my practice as a pediatrician, I was constantly bombarded with parent concer…
“I implore you — even if it’s difficult — if you don’t like your doctor, take the time and find a new one! How do you do that? Check your insurance for who they cover, and then ask your friends who they see and like. Google the physician. Google …
In a world rife with admonishments like “Do your own research” and “trust your intuition,” I don’t hear about anyone reading up on human fallibility. Picture this scene: a lecture hall in a respected medical school. The students are early in their educ…
Traditional referral intake systems haven’t changed significantly in the past 30 years. Rather, they are still based on paper and fax referrals that often get lost in the shuffle of busy days and patient care needs. This reliance on old-school methods …
It is said that everything that moves has a breaking point. Engineers understand this concept, and they have developed intricate methods to understand when metals will reach their breaking point if they sustain repeated back and forth stress. It become…
“When I teach medical students who rotate with me at my clinic, I ask them to write about the single most negative and single most positive emotional experiences they have had in their 3 to 4 years of training thus far. Commonly, I see fear as a …
One night my godson seeming anxious came to me and asked if there was such a thing as a “TomGirl”? He coined a term that addresses so many issues of our time. Questions about gender stereotypes and the negative idea of the word feminine. A few years…
