I don’t think I became a whole person until my mid-30s. When you spend the majority of your life in school, training, and building a practice, everything else goes on hold, or autopilot. There are very few things that I made conscious decisions a…
Category: primary care
The center of gravity in health care and the role of primary care
I’ve been as guilty as anyone of leaving my patient out on a limb. As a practicing primary care physician, I’ve had patients with diabetes who observe Ramadan, but I had no idea how to support them during their fast. I’ve had transgen…
Restoring the value of primary care
In most professions, the pecking order is clear, even when there’s no formal designation. Take pro football. Although nothing in the rulebook grants status or authority to certain players, everyone knows the starting quarterback is the most valua…
We are not defined by what we eat
Throughout history, ancient tribes practiced cannibalism with the intent of bolstering their own courage or energy by consuming their defeated enemies. They wanted to be what they ate: full of courage and vigor. They would even eat their enemies to van…
A photographic exploration of the physician’s inner life
I entered my Manhattan apartment around midnight, roughly an hour after observing a transplant team recover kidneys and a liver from a young patient newly pronounced dead. Still wearing scrubs, I sat down on my bed, and, like a ghostly twin or guardian…
A primary care physician’s gut feelings
To spend an entire college year (two semesters) studying epistemology seemed like a colossal waste of time when I was 19. We had no choice; we had to take it, and I got a pretty good mark, as I recall. It took a half year to find out what it was about,…
How about those doctor hoppers?
Oh no, it’s a doctor hopper. You know who I’m talking about: the patients with twenty previous doctors documented in their chart. The ones who took years to be diagnosed. The ones who still have not been diagnosed, but insist something is w…
How this physician’s self-care awakening helped her lose weight and take control of her health
For many of us, the term self-care is synonymous with self-indulgence. I used to think so too. Our thoughts immediately race towards behavior that would require us to take time away from our loved ones or somehow shortchange them of our responsibilitie…
Family medicine and the fight for the soul of health care [PODCAST]
“Overall, the health system in the United States is still not tilting its axes in favor of either primary care or family doctor. What is worse, family doctors as a collective are more balkanized and less cohesive than ever. There is a sense among…
The value of hope
We all need hope. It is powerful and its absence is devastating. Hope allows us to move forward and to dream. Over decades of practice, I have found it to be the most powerful medication I can give a patient. When we dispense hope, we must be as honest…
