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Physician voices
Like interest rates and food prices, burnout among health care providers continues to rise. From my perch—as a hospitalist in a large tertiary hospital—the sheer terror of the early days of the COVID pandemic has been replaced by a grinding…
Like interest rates and food prices, burnout among health care providers continues to rise.
From my perch—as a hospitalist in a large tertiary hospital—the sheer terror of the early days of the COVID pandemic has been replaced by a grinding fatigue fueled by staffing shortages across the entire health care system.
Patients and their families are burned out too, frustrated by delays and shortcomings in care that inevitably arise in an overworked …
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Gratitude takes practice. How come health care workers aren’t better at it?
Conditions and diseases
An excerpt from Man Overboard!: A Medical Lifeline for the Aging Male. OK, you don't consider yourself an exerciser. It's just not you. You hate running. You don't have the social temperament or the body image to show up in…
An excerpt from Man Overboard!: A Medical Lifeline for the Aging Male.
OK, you don’t consider yourself an exerciser. It’s just not you. You hate running. You don’t have the social temperament or the body image to show up in a gym. You’re not interested in doing a Turkey Trot, Reindeer Run or, God forbid, the Boston Marathon. You’d almost certainly drown in a triathlon. You just want to walk …
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Activity is good. Exercise is better.
Medical education
If "video killed the radio star" and Zoom squelched the commute, it seems certain that virtual reality and three-dimensional imaging will be the death knell for cadavers. Recently, NBC Nightly News did a story featuring staff members from Case Western…
If “video killed the radio star” and Zoom squelched the commute, it seems certain that virtual reality and three-dimensional imaging will be the death knell for cadavers.
Recently, NBC Nightly News did a story featuring staff members from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine using the metaverse and 3D imaging to map out the details of an upcoming complex brain surgery. No matter that the four participants were in different …
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A death knell for cadavers
Physician voices
In a moment of caffeine-depleted delirium, I volunteered to head the creation of a “notes committee” for my 80-member hospitalist group. I placed myself on a 72-hour hold and quickly established a group consensus: "Bloated notes are a huge problem…
In a moment of caffeine-depleted delirium, I volunteered to head the creation of a “notes committee” for my 80-member hospitalist group.
I placed myself on a 72-hour hold and quickly established a group consensus: “Bloated notes are a huge problem and a time suck. I’m glad you [rather than me] are working on this. My notes are fine, though. It’s other people’s notes that are bad. Other people’s bad notes are …
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Bloated notes are a huge problem and a time suck
Conditions and diseases
As a hospitalist in Minnesota, my colleagues and I are busy preparing for the coming viral storm. It is starting to rain. We read the harrowing front line stories from overwhelmed hospitals in China, Italy, and now here in the…
As a hospitalist in Minnesota, my colleagues and I are busy preparing for the coming viral storm. It is starting to rain. We read the harrowing front line stories from overwhelmed hospitals in China, Italy, and now here in the U.S., and reach for a sublingual Zofran tablet to calm the nauseous dread.
The smart and intuitive “flatten the curve” graphic has made a strong case to the public for why …
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Hospitals run on much more than doctors and nurses, so spread the love
Conditions and diseases
Doctors are intelligent people, but are we good thinkers? And how should we think? There are two basic kinds of thinking: analytic and intuitive. (And maybe good and bad, so that’s four.) Within medicine, analytic thinking can perhaps be best…
Doctors are intelligent people, but are we good thinkers? And how should we think?
There are two basic kinds of thinking: analytic and intuitive. (And maybe good and bad, so that’s four.) Within medicine, analytic thinking can perhaps be best exemplified in the evidence-based movement, which began in the early 1990’s. It was a gilded age, full of promise, and bolstered by the reality that computers would give physicians instant access to the …
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How doctors should think: Heuristic thinking isn’t heretical
Physician voices
Here’s some advice for your career in health care: Leave the country as soon as possible. This has nothing to do with the president’s attempts to euthanize the Affordable Care Act. Or with EMRs, Medicare reimbursements, or the burnout surveys…
Here’s some advice for your career in health care: Leave the country as soon as possible.
This has nothing to do with the president’s attempts to euthanize the Affordable Care Act. Or with EMRs, Medicare reimbursements, or the burnout surveys you get from your employer, who also sends emails aimed at getting you to work faster and more efficiently.
It’s none of that. You need to leave the country, just for a …
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Do yourself a favor: Leave the country and see how health care is abroad
Drugs and prescribing
The WHO’s recent announcement of multi-drug resistant strains of gonorrhea raises the specter of a worldwide SuperClap Attack that even the Avengers couldn’t foil. It also comes as yet another ominous reminder of the perils of rampant and indiscriminate antibiotic…
The WHO’s recent announcement of multi-drug resistant strains of gonorrhea raises the specter of a worldwide SuperClap Attack that even the Avengers couldn’t foil. It also comes as yet another ominous reminder of the perils of rampant and indiscriminate antibiotic use.
There’s plenty of blame to spread around. True, here in the U.S., consumers can’t buy antibiotics over the counter, but that hasn’t kept physicians and other providers from over-prescribing them …
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Should only infectious disease specialists be allowed to prescribe antibiotics?
Health policy
The title of Noam Scheiber’s January 9, 2016 New York Times piece on hospitalists, “Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine,” skirts the bigger issue for doctors, which has less to do with contracts, salaries and labor relations, and much…
The title of Noam Scheiber’s January 9, 2016 New York Times piece on hospitalists, “Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine,” skirts the bigger issue for doctors, which has less to do with contracts, salaries and labor relations, and much more to do with the question, “Is health care just another business, and if so, can physicians be managed that way?”
I’m a silverback hospitalist, and when I started …
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Am I a health care business metric or a physician?
Physician voices
When a doctor makes a mistake, it’s rarely out of ignorance. We usually have the knowledge we need. Instead, most medical mistakes happen because we’re tired, distracted, hurried, or indifferent -- or maybe some combination of those things. Since physicians…
When a doctor makes a mistake, it’s rarely out of ignorance. We usually have the knowledge we need. Instead, most medical mistakes happen because we’re tired, distracted, hurried, or indifferent — or maybe some combination of those things.
Since physicians rarely publicize their personal frazzled-and-frenzied, pooped-out or burned-out quotients, health care consumers shopping for a doctor often consider Board certification as a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval. The “board” …
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Board certification is no guarantee of excellent patient care
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