Category: primary care

An excerpt from Yankee Doctor in the Bible Belt: A Memoir. There are patients you can help. You can see them through a crisis, give them a magic medicine that makes everything better. There are others where there is little you can do. Their distress is…

If you ask aspiring doctors, “Why do you want to become a doctor?” they often reply, “I want to help people” or “I want to save people.” The intention to help is commendable, but many careers work toward protecting a…

It is not every day that a children’s movie can touch and challenge the soul of an adult. This is how I felt recently during one part of Pixar’s movie Soul. Whether you’ve seen this movie or not, I want to write about one particular s…

Here’s something you may already know. I didn’t until recently, but I sure do now, and it’s a lesson I won’t forget—something I wish I’d known three weeks ago. Rabbits love cone flowers. We recently downsized to a cute hou…

In medicine, there’s a rhythm we grow accustomed to—diagnose, treat, move on to the next patient. But for me, beneath that rhythm, there’s always been a quiet hum: belief. Not the kind that seeks to explain every event or outcome, but the kind th…

It was recently reported that barely 10 percent of U.S. doctors work in rural health care. That number is continuing to shrink, while over 20 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, and more than 80 percent of rural Americans are considere…