Like interest rates and food prices, burnout among health care providers continues to rise. From my perch—as a hospitalist in a large tertiary hospital—the sheer terror of the early days of the COVID pandemic has been replaced by a grinding fatigue fue…
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! In this episode, we welcome Jennifer Shaer, a pediatrician, to discuss the issue of physician suicide rates and how the holidays can impact mental health. Despite being one of the happiest …
As physicians, we all know what “badness” is in medicine. “Badness” is a word many physicians use to convey a painful, complicated, tragic, or adverse clinical experience. Badness is usually some bad, particularly emotional R…
As nurses in behavioral health, we were not well-versed in the field. After 33 years in ICU nursing, I left the unit expecting behavioral health to be an easier transition. However, the comparison between the two was like comparing apples to oranges. T…
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! Join us on this episode, where we welcome Brian Boxer Wachler, an ophthalmologist and author of Influenced: The Impact of Social Media on Our Perception. During the COVID shutdowns, Brian h…
My personal doctor and two of my cherished mentors died within the past several years, each “after a long illness,” according to their obituaries. Rock legend David Crosby (The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) recently died ̶…
My personal doctor and two of my cherished mentors died within the past several years, each “after a long illness,” according to their obituaries. Rock legend David Crosby (The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) recently died ̶…
What would you expect to see if you threw a pebble in a pond? You would likely see a ripple in the water, extending wider than the diameter of the pebble. Seeing a pebble drop into a pond and create ripples is always mesmerizing. It’s amazing to …
At her first visit, still lightly jaundiced, Jennie wanted to talk about a liver transplant. I told her that she had to be sober for six months before they would consider putting her on the list. She told me proudly that she had been sober for three we…
An excerpt from If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It’s So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First. In late March 2021, during a lull between the third and fourth waves of the coronavirus pandemic, I drove to the small to…
