I’m a doctor. And, like most medical professionals, I’m a bad patient. Two years after my last appointment, I got a CTJ, “Come to Jesus” from my doctor. I called his office for a form. I needed proof that I don’t have tertiary syphilis. For my Thai vis…
A few months ago, I realized it was time to have a conversation with my tweenage son that I had been dreading. It wasn’t where babies come from. It wasn’t about death or illness or substance abuse. My son, always sensitive and inquisitive, was sitt…
It’s a funny world we live in. Lots of people make a handsome living, defining their work and setting their own fees and hours with little or no formal education or certification There are personal and executive coaches, wealth advisers, marketing expe…
When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, bioethicists feared that giving people the results of genetic tests would do them a lot more harm than good. Experts feared that individuals who received genetic information about their future health status …
Falling through the cracks, when it comes to health care, is a bad thing, but the way things are going, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid. Providers in every setting are bombarded on all sides with data, results, messages, and things crying…
When we think about clinical reasoning, most talks focus on diagnostic errors and the reasons for those errors. The legacy of Kahneman and Tversky focuses on errors and the many named mistakes we make. We focus on avoiding errors, but their work and to…
The EMR has become a focal point in the physician burnout discussion. Although I believe EMRs are a necessary evil, current iterations of them are just not good. Each click on a mouse is a prick on the many good souls that figuratively bleed until they…
As Wei Wei Lee sat with her doctor to discuss starting a family, she felt a “distance” between them. The physician was busy on the computer and focused on the screen. “It just didn’t feel very personal,” Lee said. “I didn’t feel heard.” It seemed as th…
Our job as health care professionals is not just to diagnose our patients by applying our scientific knowledge and clinical skills, but also to be the “communicator-in-chief,” “listener-in-chief,” and “reassurer-in-chief.” Any doctor who doesn’t fully …
One evening in the clinic’s bullpen provider office, a colleague of mine wondered aloud how to respond to a difficult question a patient asked via patient portal message. A physician within earshot responded, “Just because someone asks you a question d…
