What do our patients really want from us? When a patient calls up to schedule an appointment, or sends us a message through the patient portal, or calls our front desk staff to leave a message, what is it that they’re looking for? I think, more t…
Category: primary care
3 reasons why we should care about the health care experience
The health care experience is so much more than a buzzword to be talked about in administrative circles. Some physicians I encounter (a minority, but still enough) really scoff when they hear this term. Responses I’ve heard from doctors include: “Hospi…
Suboxone for pain makes sense. Why don’t more doctors prescribe it?
Many patients who end up in Suboxone treatment have chronic pain. They were originally prescribed other opiates and ended up addicted to them. Skeptics argue that is just substituting one opiate for another. But that isn’t quite accurate. More on that …
The joy of a successful blood draw
An excerpt from Are You the F**king Doctor?: Tales from the bleeding edge of medicine. The vein stands up proudly. It’s good to look at; it’s inviting. The tourniquet is satisfyingly tight, the syringe waits like a shark on the bedside table, the new o…
The joy of a successful blood draw
An excerpt from Are You the F**king Doctor?: Tales from the bleeding edge of medicine. The vein stands up proudly. It’s good to look at; it’s inviting. The tourniquet is satisfyingly tight, the syringe waits like a shark on the bedside table, the new o…
Make sure your decision to leave medicine is not based on an emotional response
We know the statistics. More than 50 percent of physicians are experiencing burnout at the hands of EMRs, a nonexistent work-life balance and regulatory constraints to name a few. This is causing physicians to leave clinical medicine and find other wor…
Will robots replace doctors?
Among the many recurring topics, this year has been the impact of machine learning in our lives, especially the implications for our future work life. Prophecies range from ubiquitous utopian machine servants to a dystopian ravaging, hollowing out the …
A physician who is afraid of shots
This is not a story about anti-vaxxers. This is a story about primary care. Running a smaller practice, as I do, has inherent rewards and challenges. There is literature on both sides of the Atlantic that patients prefer small practices. Lately, consol…
The stories of rural physicians
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. When George W. “Billy” Campbell, MD, walks down the street, he never knows who — or what — he’s going to encounter. Anything can happen when you’re the doctor at Foothills Fam…
The spirit of Santa Claus in medicine
For longer than anyone could remember, he was the rural community’s pharmacist. A skilled compounder of prescriptions and conversant in chocolates, greeting card, and how to prevent a trip to the doctor’s office by using an over-the-counter…
