A 67-year-old woman with a high-stress job had a vigorous disagreement with her neighbors last week. She developed severe substernal chest pain and called 911 fearing a heart attack. She is thin, has never smoked, has normal blood pressure and normal c…
When I meet patients in the office, our conversations do not focus exclusively on the medical issue at hand. Of course, if you come to see me with a stomach ache, at some point, I will direct the dialogue toward your abdomen. Often, our conversations a…
It can be difficult to tease out the evidence-based science amidst the claims of successful adult stem cell-based treatments for a range of health problems from joint pain to Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, and spinal cord injury. Even a num…
Touch is a sensitive thing. No pun is intended here, but whether and how we touch our patients deserves our careful thought and deliberation. So much interpersonal contact these days is virtual, with emojis, abbreviations and whole words thrown around …
The sound of a clock, hung haphazardly on a colorless cold wall, ticks repetitively — tick, tick, tick. Time continues to pass as my appointment scheduled for three hours ago seems like it will never come. I scheduled this appointment three month…
Ten years ago, I wrote an essay on the primary care shortage. I argued that more money and better working conditions would help decrease the shortage. Unfortunately, things have worsened over the last decade. The AAMC now predicts a shortage of betw…
I just did my first telemedicine video visit. The concept seems so strange, the idea of carrying out an “office visit” without the patient actually being in the office. Right now we have it structured so that when a patient calls up request…
This summer, not unlike many families across the country, we were fortunate enough to visit a theme park while celebrating our break from another challenging school year. Being a mother and a pediatrician, I must admit how concerned I was to witness th…
I was reading an article in The New York Times entitled, “The Rise of the Virtual Restaurant.” More and more people, particularly in urban settings, are using apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash to bring fresh, warm food directly to …
When looking at the way medical education and patient care is delivered, there is no question that there is a culture of “knowing.” From the moment a pre-med enters high school, they are bombarded with tests that assess knowledge. This extends througho…
