After nearly a year of planning my exit strategy, my final day as a hospital-employed physician was June 30th, 2023. How surreal to finally be independent! In a recent phone call, a dear friend and fellow physician asked what drove me to my decision.
“Because I felt like a failure every day,” I disclosed to my normally sympathetic colleague. To my dismay, he responded with a chuckle. I asked why he …
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be here?”
It was the first day of my subspecialty rotation. I’d left my husband, friends, and my home to spend the next six weeks some 2500 miles away. Like most third-year medical students on the first day of a new rotation, I felt a mixture of anxiety and anticipation for the challenge ahead.
Arriving on the twelfth floor before dawn, my badge did not work. …
As I clicked onto the homepage of Amazon Clinic, I got a little bit nervous. Low up-front costs, straight-forward medical decision-making, bread and butter medicine at the patient’s fingertips. Have a UTI? As long as it is simple, no problem, here’s your antibiotic. Just a few clicks. Male pattern baldness? Click. Erectile dysfunction? Click.
Just barebones medicine without the pesky face-to-face human interaction. And with easy-to-follow “guidelines,” we don’t even need …
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Meet Altelisha Taylor, a family medicine physician, and get clear insights into student loan repayment options. We discuss the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program and discuss options to address medical school debt as a new attending.
As I sit here contemplating the beginning of this unsent letter, I find myself questioning its intended recipient and purpose. The truth is, I don’t have the answers just yet. Perhaps, by the end of these few paragraphs, some clarity will emerge.
When I left my home country to come to the United States, I envisioned hospitals here as being on par with what we would consider “first-world country” institutions. I …
If you are a practicing physician, then you have definitely come across patients who want something that you feel is unnecessary. Sometimes those conversations escalate and become contentious, and sometimes you reluctantly give the patient what they request even though you know it’s not “best practice.” These demands and interactions can weigh on us and leave us emotionally drained.
In the pediatrics office, that can look like this:
Money, a topic often shrouded in secrecy and discomfort, has the power to shape our lives and influence our opportunities. Whether we like it or not, finances play a pivotal role in our personal and professional endeavors. However, our fear of talking about money can become a significant hindrance, limiting our potential for growth and success.
In many ways, discussing finances has become a social taboo. We avoid it at family …
As human needs continue to evolve, it is essential for our systems to adapt accordingly. One perplexing question is who bears the cost of human work. Do the systems pay for human labor, or do humans contribute to the systems, which, in turn, pay for their work? From an economic perspective, it boils down to humans paying for humans to work through human-devised systems. We won’t delve into the idea …
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Join Miguel Villagra, a hospitalist, as we explore how our thoughts shape emotions, dissecting cognitive distortions like all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, and more. Discover strategies to break free from negative loops, challenge assumptions, and cultivate a balanced perspective. …
Every business, regardless of type, size, or structure, has one primary reason: to make profits. In economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Business profitability rises to the extent that universal business principles are adopted and integrated into the medical practice business.
Business growth, endurance, and increasing profits over time are possible only when business management principles and marketing strategies are embedded …
Almost 30 years ago, as an OB/GYN intern at a large urban medical center, I was privileged to learn from exemplary doctors and midwives. After 4:30 a.m. postpartum rounds one day, a midwife said, “I saw your note. You listened for bowel sounds and examined her abdomen.” I replied, “I did.” She asked, “Did you also check her bottom?” I responded, “No. Why?” She explained, “She delivered the baby through …
The path to becoming a dermatologist has become increasingly challenging in recent years. This is due, in part, to the competitive environment of residency applications, as well as the increasing emphasis on research output. In their publication, “Research Fever—An Ever More Prominent Trend in the Residency Match,” Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Adashi note that the number of research publications on residency applications has increased significantly over the past decade. This …
During my tenure as a practicing physician, I’ve grasped that each patient necessitates and is entitled to comprehensive and unique follow-up care. Fascinatingly, this rule also relates to us, the contracted physicians. I’ve realized that a physician’s employment contract isn’t static; it is subject to deliberate and incidental alterations.
The involvement of attorneys in contract negotiation is imperative, but their influence tends to recede after the contract …
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The recent ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to eliminate race-conscious decision-making from college admissions is being openly challenged by the medical establishment. The American Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Medical Board of California, and the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaii (among others) are continuing efforts to diversify education and medical staffing despite a 6 to …
Reality knocked me for a loop one evening when my father-in-law called from his home in another state and asked for help. This kind of request was very uncharacteristic for him. We responded immediately and drove to his home. After much conversation and many questions from both sides, we eventually came to the hard truth. His cancer had progressed and, to my mind, was most likely terminal. I dug in …
Burnout isn’t our fault. However, since we can’t change the inner workings of large institutions all at once, if at all, how do we push through? How do we do more than just survive?
“More and more doctors are coming to believe that the pandemic merely worsened the strain on a health care system that was already failing because it prioritizes profits over patient care,” wrote Eyal Press in the New …
The cure for ailing health care lies in returning to ethical traditions, prioritizing patient care over profits, holding physicians accountable, and reforming existing oversight bodies and professional organizations. The ailing health care is curable. To be made whole again, it requires obvious but drastic steps. The crux of the problem is that medicine largely abandoned its own traditions and time-tested modus operandi in favor of the seemingly efficient and shiny …
An excerpt from Our Hospital.
Kush Kare Hospital in Columbia, New York, was the flagship of Kush Kare Private Equity Inc., a for-profit chain of hospitals across America. A for-profit that was listed on a lot of lucrative trading routes. Clearly its workings were murky—maybe not equity at all. A clever …
I’m so sorry, but the pain was too much, and I couldn’t continue. I have witnessed patients crying themselves to sleep while nurses held their hands, praying for their treatments to be approved, giving them one more chance at life. Nurses try to juggle 8, 9, 10, or more patients during their shifts, holding onto their compassion with the last thread of hope that things will improve. Yet, they’ve also …
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