During a day of shadowing during my first year of medical school, the physician I was following had been running behind schedule and instructed me to keep the final patient company until he caught up. I knocked on the door and found myself facing a wid…
The issue of noncompliance comes up repeatedly in patient care. Whether in the context of primary care or allied health care, in most situations, patients seem unreasonable and irresponsible when it comes to taking their medication, attending consultat…
“Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.” This quote from famous physician William Osler is as true today as it was 100 years ago. And yet the latest version of President Trump’s executive order on Medicare threatens what patients over…
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…
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…
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…
