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…
Medicine is for the birds, or it should be. Hear me out. A day before I wrote this, I was on the trail in northwest Ohio, binoculars in hand, trying to tell one warbler from another. This was the final weekend of the biggest week of birding in Magee …
Graduation from my residency program was a bittersweet experience. At the time, my specialty was suffering from a crippling job shortage, so our futures were uncertain, and a dark mood had come to permeate my radiology residency. We were disgruntled wi…
Recently, a fellow physician mom ended her life. While outwardly, a very vibrant, lively, and happy woman, she fought her own internal demons for some time. From what we know, she struggled with depression but was still committed to being a good mom, p…
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. In many ways, the patient-physician relationship is seen as being mostly one-sided, with doctors possessing medical knowledge and wisdom, and patients with less medical inf…
Imagine if your bank handled all your online transactions for free but charged you only when you visited your local branch — and then kept pestering you to come in, pay money and chat with them every three months or at least once a year if you wa…
The theme of the conference is the medical humanities. After Lawrence Hill’s keynote speech, the lineup of people waiting to speak with him is long. At the end of the day, I’m inspired by the lectures I attended, but disappointed that I did…
The theme of the conference is the medical humanities. After Lawrence Hill’s keynote speech, the lineup of people waiting to speak with him is long. At the end of the day, I’m inspired by the lectures I attended, but disappointed that I did…
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 …
“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…
