“I have closed my practice, but I have no plans to retire at the age of 52. I have started the journey to become a high school science teacher. There are frequent internet postings and blogs by physicians with strategies to retire young. I suspec…
Category: surgery
Choosing an experienced surgeon and high-volume hospital can impact your outcome
If you’ve been diagnosed with a condition and the recommended treatment is surgery, there are proactive steps you can take to lower the risk of post-surgical complications and improve the likelihood of a good outcome. First, before deciding to undergo …
Choosing an experienced surgeon and high-volume hospital can impact your outcome
If you’ve been diagnosed with a condition and the recommended treatment is surgery, there are proactive steps you can take to lower the risk of post-surgical complications and improve the likelihood of a good outcome. First, before deciding to undergo …
The day my patient called me the N-word
Two years into my surgical training, and five days after the murder of George Floyd, someone called attention to my Blackness in a way I had never experienced. One of my patients was an older white lady who appeared to be between 70 to 80 years old. I …
An operative field of dreams
I am in a select crowd. I have been fortunate enough to help some special people in their time of pain and heartache and bewilderment, facing operation or cancer or other ailments. I was fortunate to even get into medical school when I did; my grades w…
Pediatric patients need appropriate pain management after surgery
Fear of opioid addiction and misuse has been instilled into the American public – in many cases rightfully so. However, we are concerned that new guidelines for opioid prescribing in children and adolescents after surgery recently published in JAMA Sur…
Why creative endeavors are important for the future surgeon
As an aspiring surgeon, I at times contemplate whether being creative has any effect on my future career. On one hand, if you see surgery as an “art,” then possibly a creative personality is beneficial. On the other hand, surgery often seems objective …
Make a difference, one life at a time
I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, heading to Ukraine “to make a difference,” or so I hoped. I was leading a medical mission to this beautiful yet poor and war-torn country. I was watching the movie First Man about the landing of Apollo 11 on the…
The inestimable value of a mentor
Quick, think of someone unrelated to you who has had a major impact on your life. I’d wager the vast majority of us pictured a face or two, and that nearly all (I hope) represented a positive influence. In my thirty-plus-year career in medicine, I’ve b…
The time when our health care dollars are worth every penny
I complain about the state of U.S. health care a lot. It’s not driven by quality. It’s expensive. It’s corporatized. It undervalues and commoditizes clinical workers. It’s too controlled by insurance companies. It’s riddle…
