This article concerns what I call the poor conversationalist. There are several common versions of this, and all of them have corresponding parallels in nonmedical settings. Often the most basic difficulty is one of manner. A good conversationalist is …
I think the time has come for us all to do a little more than put our 2 cents in. Our health care system is a mess, and while many of us fighting in the trenches and taking care of patients are working to make things better (despite the best efforts of…
There is a lot of talk about team-based care nowadays, and I had seen some shining examples of that, most recently when a patient at my clinic had a suicide in the family. But at the same time, there are so many decisions – judgment calls, really – tha…
“She is meant for more than just primary care,” mused an attending on my internal medicine rotation in medical school. He was referring to a particularly adept resident with whom we were working. This resident was planning on practicing clinic-based ge…
Telehealth, using video to have an acute medical care visit, puts some of the power of choice back into our patient’s hands. To best frame telehealth and its use cases, the National Quality Forum published a report in 2017, outlining the following four…
Health products are increasingly moving from the realm of the medical professional to the consumer. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) versions of teeth alignment kits, genetic tests, hearing aids, heart-rhythm monitors, neurostimulation devices, and mental heal…
A physician, like anyone, can be a poor explainer of things for several reasons, but foremost among these is the tendency to use medical jargon. This is not a problem unique to doctors. When I take my car in for repairs, I often must ask the mechanic t…
Work-life balance is hard, and that’s true for so many career options both in and out of the medical field. The topic is something that you consider as you choose a career path. It’s something that you struggle to achieve and maintain as you train for …
Every day, as we care for our patients, we are placed in a unique position, where we are armed with the world of literature, randomized controlled trials, society recommendations, national screening and practice guidelines, and more, working to prompt …
Death is an inevitable part of the journey of life. We all have experienced its effects: the death of a family member, the death of a friend or those special individuals who we might have barely known but who left an indelible mark upon our consciousne…
