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An excerpt from Why We Revolt: A Patient Revolution for Careful and Kind Care. It was late at the premier teaching hospital in the country, and we were overworked and overwhelmed. Those patients in most trouble had made it in, but many waited outside, a domino line ...

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There’s nothing like the holidays and a new year around the corner to remind us that 2020 is almost over. This year let’s try to take nothing for granted. Especially since millions of Americans will soon sit down to a holiday meal with one or more loved ones missing. Those empty chairs are a reminder of what we have endured this year. Whether it be loved ones who are sick, ...

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For most of us, medical training through all the pains of medical school and residency is often bearable when we fantasize about life on the other side of all of this. Life as an attending physician, when the sky suddenly turns all rainbow, when the money starts to fall from those skies -- we're finally our own bosses, and then we're supposed to live happily ever after. The reality, however, ...

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The cold and flu season looks very different this year with the COVID-19 pandemic. When a person has a fever, sore throat, aches, and chills, they need to consider when to self isolate, when to be tested for COVID-19, when to be assessed in person and when antibiotics should be considered. Is it a common cold, the flu, a bacterial infection, or the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)? In a recent article in the British ...

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"The dictionary definition of learning is 'the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.' For leaders, the most crucial and common way of learning happens through experience, and as we often say, leadership is flying the plane while building it. Moreover, the onus of making the process ...

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It was early February when I first felt the tides changing. I remember it well. I was having lunch with a friend – another doctor – and the situation in China was bleak. We agreed it was only a matter of time before the novel coronavirus would erupt in the United States. As medical professionals, we knew that contagious diseases don’t just stay in a box, no matter how much ...

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In a world of unprecedented access to information and incredible connectedness, everyone is an expert. Public health has been one of the many victims of this phenomenon, yet it is the single most important strategy for managing the global crisis we are in. The problem with public health is that it is not particularly likable. That has not always been so. Public health used to be really sexy. As the germ ...

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An excerpt from The Healer's Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief.

Leaning on the door of Trauma Bay 1, I survey the remains of my latest failure. The story is told in the bloody and jumbled instrument trays, monitors now silent and dark. In ...

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I am a medical doctor—a hospitalist working in an environment with many talented professionals.  We share our knowledge and our approach to medicine with one another in ways that profoundly affect our patients and other personnel in the hospital. At our best, we are a community whose foundation is a willingness and openness to discuss hard facts and make difficult decisions. So why is it that when I was first diagnosed with ...

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"Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely road. Everyone dreams of life after a successful round of funds being raised, staff being hired, and plunging headfirst into the making and shipping of widgets. But there are many days which no one talks about, where a budding entrepreneur must find a way to ...

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Life as we know it has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Every aspect of our health care system is affected; in particular, our nation’s frontline workers are being stretched like never before. From managing the pandemic long term to physician well-being, social determinants of health (SDOH), and health care reform, the incoming Administration should heed doctors’ warnings to foster a health care system that works for everyone.

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I am a critical care physician. I am at the frontlines of this pandemic, in a state of "war" against an unseen enemy that has brought unimaginable destruction in its path. I arrive at work at 7 a.m. for my shift. I am in a state of hypervigilance. It is a chilly fall day, but in my hospital issue scrubs, I feel warm. I am ready for what is to come. I ...

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After three months as a newly minted doctor, I knew that any plan that I made for my first vacation week would be futile in the context of COVID-19, so I attempted an escape into the headspace of others. During my first day on vacation, I asked my Twitter community to share the following post widely:

“I'm on my vacation week w/ nothing to do, so I want to ...

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It started with diarrhea.  Then fever before the patient sought care.  The infiltrates were impressive.  A dry cough with paroxysms that were sometimes uncontrollable.   The rapid test came back negative, as did the send out PCR.  The patient returned from international travel two days before admission.  My index of suspicion was extremely high.  Yes, please keep the patient on enhanced respiratory droplet precautions because her viral load in the nasopharynx ...

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The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of KevinMD authors in their own words. 15 minutes a day. 7 days a week. Your daily dose of information, insight, and inspiration. Here is what people are saying: "Thank you Kevin for your dedication to giving so many of us, your colleagues, a chance to ...

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"I’m exhausted. As the pandemic rages on, the mental toll of dealing with COVID-19 has started to wear on me. As a practicing hospitalist in the Midwest impacted by one of the many hotspots caused by the meatpacking industry, I have spent a fair bit of time with this virus on the ...

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“Do you think we should prepare a will?” I vividly remember saying these words to my wife, also a physician, as we drastically saw COVID cases rise in early March 2020. Just months ago, we heard about the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 but did not grasp the world-changing consequences it would have. Living in Western New York, we were not immediately hit with a surge of cases like ...

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The first thing my husband said when I told him about MBA school was, “the NBA has a school?”  It didn’t help that we first had our conversation about MBA school during the NBA playoffs but really – NBA school?  I quickly overcame this moronic start to the conversation by saying “M” as in Michael Jordan – MBA school.  He got it from there and every day since. And every ...

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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone, especially those of us in health care.  Our way of practicing medicine has been changed; some would say forever. We find ourselves affected not only clinically but also emotionally.  As a result, clinicians are experiencing more stress and anxiety than ever before. These feelings are not new but have been heightened in the face of the pandemic. Physicians are perceived as self-reliant, emotionally stoic, and ...

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