Category: primary care

The attack in Buffalo, Minnesota: a primary care physician’s perspective 

You might be next.   I began my career as a family physician in Buffalo, MN in 2002. I have been an extremely productive doctor for 20 years and currently reside just out of St Paul, MN. For context, I can assure the reader that my ratings and reviews …

The case for physician peer coaching

I love metaphors. I think they can be so powerful and can convey so much, sometimes with just a few words. One metaphor we use in coaching to describe the coach’s role in a session with their client is that of a swimming pool. The client is in the swim…

How this physician escaped the system

“Wrong! The most important part of your job is to make money.” I will never forget those words from an attending in residency – though I did not know it at the time, it was a pivotal moment in my decision to pursue a nontraditional route in medicine. I…

The destructive health consequences of political polarization

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. Political divisiveness has always been part of the fabric of America.  Even as our Founders laid the groundwork for the United States, they understood the challenges of seeking…

How divorce helped this physician

I got married the day after I graduated from medical school to someone I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. Seven years later, we were divorced. Even though a high percentage of marriages end in divorce, there is still a stigma that many…

Yes, your doctor was a sorority girl

Patients often comment on my attire other than my white coat, particularly my impractical footwear, until I finally broke down and purchased Danskos to avoid being called out for my truthful impracticality. It is amazing how patients care more about my…

Building a bond of trust between patient and physician

We live in a world today where there is misinformation in abundant supply. What we see and hear in the media one day seems to be reversed the following day. What to believe, who to believe? Our world appears to be in a state of turmoil, a state of cont…

Social services resource overload: How using a simple interactive map can help

Stacks of flyers ranging from local free dinners to legal services collecting in a box or filing cabinet are familiar scenes in student-run clinics (SRCs). To anyone who has worked in social services, maintaining organization and keeping up-to-date res…

A surgeon left his own son’s funeral to take care of your child

I recently read a story that struck close to home for me, and I suspect for nearly all of you in your medical careers at one time or another. It was a story of a surgeon called in urgently to the ED for a seriously injured young boy. The surgeon arrive…

Black physicians are tired of paying the minority tax

Here’s a controversial phrase for a doctor to say that needs to be normalized: “I am tired.” As a physician, working oneself to exhaustion for our patients is often seen as a sign of strength and even heroic.  As a rare Black male in medicine in the mi…