“Don’t be the patient that says: ‘Doc, just tell me what to do …’ Instead, you should ask for information to empower yourself to make decisions about your healing process. Framing questions around the clinician’s experience is always …
Category: primary care
Are you a healer or a widget?
In the “Show-Me State” of Missouri, physicians receive their licenses from the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts. Seriously! This quaint term harkens back to a time when newly minted doctors had a relatively easy time realizing their desire t…
What makes you cry? Better yet, why not cry?
I rarely cried growing up. The time I remember most, I was twelve. I was pitching in the semifinals of the Tennessee State Dixie Youth Baseball tournament to qualify for its equivalent of the Little League World Series. In the first inning, I gave up a…
4 questions that made me become a health coach
I love science. I enjoy studying the human body and its amazing ability to adapt, heal, and restore. I love critical thinking, problem-solving, and forward progress, but the practice of medicine is not a science experiment. In medicine, I manage people…
365 shows later: The Podcast by KevinMD’s most popular episodes
It’s been such an inspiring journey for The Podcast by KevinMD! I started the show one year ago, on June 1, 2020. I didn’t know what to expect, who would want to be on the show, or who would listen. Heck, I didn’t know the first thing…
The mission of medicine: not just a job
The mission of medicine is to heal the sick. When cure is elusive, it is to relieve distress, and always to comfort. All of us who became physicians had our reasons, but we had to have a genuine interest and ability in science, and an appreciation of…
A physician’s opinion on second opinions
In medicine, there are those patients that know they have a morbid underlying diagnosis, and no doctor can convince them otherwise. And there are also those that know they are perfectly well and need no treatment, and no doctor can convince them otherw…
How to bring the human side back to medicine
In the book The Insanity of God, the writer had been an American missionary to Somalia during the late 1980s through early ’90s. This was a time when there was no place on earth with greater needs, hardships, suffering, and dying. It truly was he…
Doctors’ dirty little secrets
Doctors have a few dirty little secrets. We have the highest rates of suicide amongst all professions and are in desperate need of mental health reform. For those who don’t know what it’s like to work in this area, it can be difficult to un…
I was a doctor. Could I also be a nurse?
Recently, one of my clinic patients asked me to administer his intramuscular medication injection. I appreciated the vote of confidence but had to tell him he was mistaken in thinking that my skill would surpass that of our nurses’. “Trust me,” I told …
