“Dehumanizing patients can lead to indifference in physicians. It is a privilege to be trusted to take care of every patient we encounter, yet we can lose sight of this and begin to see our patients as a burden, or as units of work, rather than a…
Category: surgery
Ageism and the mid-career physician
Four years ago, I was ready to throw in the towel. I practiced for 22 years in a large metropolitan hospital, became very involved in resident education, clinical program directorship, medical staff affairs, in addition to a busy hospital-based surgic…
The bleak reality of racial disparity in surgical care
As a practicing surgeon for 30 years in the super-specialized field of otology, neurotology and skull base surgery, I have been privy to some of the most disturbing realities of surgical care. Often, these realities are bleaker than most people expect….
You are not “asleep” under anesthesia
“You will be asleep for your surgery,” anesthesiologists often reassure their patients. Just before the start of anesthesia, a patient may hear the nurse saying, “Think of a nice dream as you go off to sleep.” While these statements are intended to soo…
Robotic surgery’s impact on training the next generation of surgeons
While we’re not there yet, we may be approaching a point where we’re facing a significant skills shortage among surgeons. A 2017 study by Meritt Hawkins found that 52 percent of orthopedic surgeons were 55 and older, as were 48 percent of general surge…
Our country needs a debridement: A South African physician reflects
This week sees myself in the office only for a few hours. I decided to drive across the city yesterday to meet with supportive friends for lunch. All three of us are fully vaccinated. Along the way in the suburbs, there were still people parked at stra…
The medical team is at a breaking point
It was a cold day in Durban. Sixteen degrees Celsius is cold for us on the East Coast of sub-tropical Africa. I had made a trip through the suburbs to drop something off for my theatre scrub sister. The roadblocks are manned by community commandos, mo…
Pediatric patients need appropriate pain management after surgery [PODCAST]
“We believe optimal postoperative pain management should provide adequate pain relief, minimize adverse effects, and reduce chances of drug misuse. While we cannot undertreat pain, we also cannot go back to the practice of over-prescribing or unn…
A physician, being viscerally vulnerable as a patient
It took about ten minutes of carefully shifting the controls on the hospital bed, placing pillows in the right spaces to prop me up to angle that resembles “sitting”—all done delicately so as to not increase the pain level I was already in….
Surgeons: Check your ego
How is your ego serving you? Medicine is a hierarchical entity. More so in surgery. There is a linear line of command from the chief to the junior to the intern to the med student to the aspiring med student. “Shit rolls downhill,” we said …
