There has been a recent surge in discussion about men’s fear to work alone with female colleagues in medicine. This reluctance puts both men and women at a disadvantage. Women are being excluded from career opportunities and men are missing out on the benefits of collaboration. As a victim of sexual misconduct during my own […]
Category: primary care
Stop stigmatizing medication-assisted treatment
Imagine yourself as a patient burdened with a chronic disease that necessitated daily medication adherence to function. Now imagine that medication has become so stigmatized by society that you feel judged and ashamed every time that you use it. That’s the world that individuals with opioid use disorder are forced to live in when they’re […]
Evening eating: Are you a “light” eater?
An excerpt from Let Go of Emotional Overeating and Love Your Food: A Five-Point Plan for Success. Copyright © 2018 by Arlene B. Englander. Published by Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved. Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight or keep weight off realizes that evening can be the make or break time of […]
Do opioid contracts harm the doctor-patient relationship?
A contract is an agreement stipulating the rights and obligations of the signatories. In most cases, a contract is consulted when a dispute arises. When all is proceeding swimmingly, the contract remains dormant in a file drawer or in a digital file. In general, decent people resolve differences in the old-fashioned way utilizing the twin […]
Medicine is a word with 3 meanings
Everybody is a stakeholder these days in what we broadly call medicine, or health care. But there is little agreement on what medicine is and what the priorities of the health care “industry” should be. I propose this breakdown of medicine into three separate phenomena. 1. Micromedicine 2. Macromedicine 3. Metamedicine Let me explain: Micromedicine: […]
A scrum master for primary care
We should consider a new position in our primary care teams — that of the scrum master. “Scrum” is a rugby term that comes from agile, a work methodology for software development that now is being applied to industry and health care. In rugby, a scrum is a huddle where the teams come together with […]
I learned how to be a good doctor in theater school
It’s hard for me to believe that a few years ago, I completely turned my back on an acting career I had spent almost two decades building and instead decided to forge into an unknown world of medicine. Even now, with nearly seven years of experience in the medical field and currently in my fourth […]
Imagine yourself treating a celebrity
A few weeks ago, I was giving a day-long seminar in California on improving communication skills, optimizing the patient experience, and how this is all ultimately linked to better proven outcomes. Part of the day involved doing role plays, playing the part of doctors and patients in various difficult hypothetical scenarios. My experience of this […]
Clicking checkboxes doesn’t meaningfully improve care
Earlier this week, I was pleased to learn that my practice had achieved a statistically significant increase in box clicking. In reviewing data from our accountable care organization, graphs were shown to us demonstrating improved compliance with several of the measures that they’ve instituted institution-wide for the purpose of reporting back to Medicare on how […]
When doctors behave badly: a call for civility
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. It can be as blatant as a public argument between a hospitalist and emergency medicine physician about whether a patient requires admission. But most commonly it is more nuanced and subtle. Such as members of one speciality “bad-mouthing” another or a subspecialist criticizing […]