Jennifer was one of my first patients as a new doctor, and she came to see me about an unintended pregnancy. A single mom to a rambunctious 5-year-old girl, Jennifer was struggling economically and battling depression. We talked about the options available to her: continuing the pregnancy and preparing to parent another child, offering the baby for adoption or having an abortion. She chose to continue with the pregnancy, and ...
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One Saturday morning at the Salt Lake City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, I got out of a call room bed and realized I had done it. The year everyone dreads, the year everyone says, “you just need to get through” was finally over. I had completed my write-ups on all the patients I admitted overnight. My emergency room consultation requests had been seen. I checked my pager for missed pages: ...
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If you’ve read my reviews of the new medical TV show Monday Mornings, you’ll know I’ve been critical of many things about it. I was particularly disappointed with the way the show handled one of its central themes: the morbidity and mortality (M&M) conference.
I thought it might be useful to tell you how most real M&M conferences are run. M&M conferences generally take place at hospitals with residency training ...
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The fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens has been a long and storied one. We have fought for rights related to family, marriage, anti-discrimination and service to our country. We have reveled in the freedom to be openly ourselves in public and have cheered as the fight for equality became a priority not only for ourselves but also for our straight allies. As Rhode Island recently ...
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Giving and receiving feedback is really hard. When I left training and joined the faculty at a major medical school last year I found many things about my new position daunting. Fitting into a well established practice; learning a new system; being a teacher; juggling different services and roles; billing appropriately; and last but not least, giving feedback.
Psychological and logistical hurdles make it challenging to deliver feedback. Constructively criticizing the ...
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“That makes no sense!” a friend recently blurted out to me after I finished helping her understand how the vast majority of internal medicine residents are trained in this country. Her incredulousness was less about the "how," and more about the “where.”
No doubt. When you consider that the overwhelming majority of practitioners will ultimately be practicing almost exclusively in the outpatient environment, and that cost-conscious healthcare reform efforts are specifically ...
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As the sun rises in hospitals across the nation, medical interns start their age old ritual of rounding and examining patients. While the old guard may feel that paper and pens are being replaced by impersonal interactions of mouse clicks and scrolling through the electronic medical records; the essence of the intern experience remains the same.
It is a year filled with a roller coaster of highs and lows which adds ...
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When I was growing up in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, there was always some smart aleck boy on the playground who had "facts" to share about the Soviets. His recitation was meant to emphasize how weird, how different, how other our arch enemies were. "They make you wear all brown and gray there." "They eat only boiled cabbage and potatoes." "They tell you what to ...
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I've been a family medicine residency faculty member for nearly 5 years, and I've come to observe the yearly cycle of a residency over that time. Reminding myself of that cycle helps me weather and celebrate the peculiarities of each time of year.
July-September: Adjustment
Every resident's role changes on July 1. For the first-years, it's their first day of being called "doctor." Second- and third-year ...
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Recently, I was having a discussion with a colleague about being a doctor. She confided in me that if someone asked her about becoming a doctor, she would tell him or her to become a nurse practitioner. After reading the emotional open letter to our policymakers in Washington DC, it may sound like a reasonable suggestion. After all, why go into this much debt and spend so much ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
Matthew Moeller, MD | PhysicianA gun owner responds to Sandy Hook
Edwin Leap, MD | PhysicianIs Chris Christie too obese to run for president?
Jeffrey Parks, MD | PhysicianIf I’m wrong about guns, can you please explain why?
Claire McCarthy, MD | PhysicianPrimary care doctors may no longer be needed
Doug Olson, MD | PhysicianWalgreens moves into primary care, and it’s our own damn fault
Kevin Pho, MD | Kevin's Take