Category: Specialist

A physician’s work dread and what he did about it [PODCAST]

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! “Work dread. Even if you didn’t know it had a name, you know the feeling. It is that sensation in the pit of your stomach when you realize that the start of your workday or workweek i…

I’m a physician, not a provider [PODCAST]

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! “This is an important time to rise up, come together, and understand that it is our time to remove the confusing veil put on us. We are not delirious. We are not psychotic. We are phy…

I’m a physician, not a provider

Your parents likely spent months searching through baby name books, polling the family, and looking through the photo albums of ancestors to pick the perfect name for you. Maybe your parents had to see your face before they could pick the perfect one. …

How this physician built a direct specialty care practice [PODCAST]

“I am here to testify that it is possible, and I am not alone in this specialist direct care market. There are other specialists’ practices like mine, hidden gems for patient care. During my journey, I learned specialists are thriving to remove t…

The unsung heroes: respiratory therapists

Working day after day, year after year, in a busy high acuity ICU, we all have become a “second family.” The public doesn’t hear much about respiratory therapists, especially during this COVID nightmare. But they have been the unsung …

Burnout and bias? Or medical gaslighting?

Five years into my practice as an academic allergist/immunologist, my perceptions continue to evolve. Though once primarily informed by my mentors’ wisdom, I continue incorporating my experiences as both physician and autoimmune patient to guide …

Let’s talk about hierarchy and priorities in medicine

Life is full of hierarchies — whether you are the older brother in the family, the supervisor in a company, a chief resident in medicine. There is always a hierarchy. It is a pecking order that keeps our society organized. You know where to look for gu…

The expanding role of specialists in value-based care

Value-based care has become a buzzword over the past decade with early experiments in Massachusetts, followed by creating Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) as part of the Affordable Care Act. As commercial insurers jumped onto this bandwag…

What if the hierarchy in medicine was dismantled?

About a year ago, before the pandemic hit, I was at the local fitness center, having just completed a group exercise class, when my former residency program director entered the room. I hadn’t seen him in 20 years. He looked exactly the same, give or t…

How patients put my life into perspective

Today my clinic patient lost his wallet, including his cash, government ID, and his credit cards. He drove more than 130 miles to the clinic.  Still, somehow, he sat in front of me in the exam chair as patient as ever through all my history questions. …