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Category: primary care
Tips to be a more productive, less stressed physician
Why should you be more productive? Because time is money? Not only that. I prefer time is family or time is go-home-sooner. Being more productive in medicine isn’t working more hours or faster; it means working better. Take breaks. Doctors rarely…
For a better practitioner and better outcomes, we need to start teaching this
Current medical education promotes and encourages the textbook approach to learning, while interactive patient-centered learning rarely happens. Although rote learning plays a critical role in medical education, applying what is learned deepens the und…
Is Google your first responder?
An excerpt from Taking Care of You: The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Better Health. How many times have you found yourself with an unusual symptom or ailment and then quickly opened your phone to Google what it means? A lot of us do it! Whether we …
Primary Care 2.0: new thinking and practice redesign
A patient of mine — we’ll call her Ruby — is a 79-year-old woman from the same part of rural Tennessee as my mother. Her recent successful experiences with treatment illustrate some of the themes that my colleagues and I encountered when we under…
Families come in various forms
I was nervous, but I knew what I needed to do. I reminded myself that I would have regrets if I did not initiate the conversation I envisioned in the proceeding days. After a resident with whom I worked closely on my family medicine rotation gave me fe…
We tell our stories, but who will listen?
You and I are different from who we were yesterday, last year, three years ago. We have been impacted by the pandemic, loss, and stress. We are struggling to bring some semblance of normality back into our lives. War, climate change, racial discontent,…
Adding more team members is the wrong answer to decreasing physician burnout
I recently read an article about reducing physician burnout written by a health care consultant who proposed the creation of an enhanced medical scribe, or “team care assistant” (TCA). According to the article, the TCA obtains the patient&#…
The reality of being a physician and a son at the same time
On February 25th, 2022, my father was placed on oxygen a week after I had surgery for a torn Achilles. He was facing his first idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) flare. I knew this day would come; it was only a matter of time. I’ve seen and care…
The journey is to find the gift in the challenge
An excerpt from The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Ours is a culture wholly averse to death and even aging; think of how many products are geared toward erasing or “reversing” the signs of oncoming infirmit…
