"Even low dose mercury toxicity can be harmful to human health in a variety of ways: enhanced free radical stress, reduced glutathione levels, increase in apolipoprotein E g4 genotype expression, promotion of neurofibrillary tangles and altered immune...
"One initiative that more administrators should support is global medical outreach. The ability to practice pure medicine, like the neighborhood doctor from long ago, renews a love for the vocation that physicians sought when they first entered...
"Patients want more than simply learning about a problem and how to treat it. Patients want reassurance. While I summarized the proposed surgical treatment, I watched for signs of anxiety or lack of understanding. Ultimately, my patient wanted to have...
"Arguably one of the most overlooked yet incredibly important aspects of your malpractice insurance policy is the Consent to Settle Provision. You’re paying thousands of dollars a year for your malpractice insurance; you should have a say in how...
"Sufferers of mental illness often believe that others feel they have control of their symptoms, only having to decide to not be, for example, depressed. While they themselves suffer the symptoms of mental illness, they often have the feeling that...
"I started planning my escape in late 2020. I would find a way to quit health care, to cease being a practicing physician altogether. Living the life of a doctor-mom, I felt consumed with daily obligations and duties. Guilt plagued …
"Before retirement, I switched everything I cared about to my personal one and unsubscribed to everything I didn’t care about. For the first few months, I religiously checked my work email. Sure, I was missing important information. I finally weaned...
"Patients look to providers for guidance, wisdom, and hope. When patients receive a new chronic disease diagnosis, it can feel terminal to the layperson. Even pre-diabetes is traumatizing to an otherwise healthy adult. We must not underestimate the...
"There is a lot of confusion and outright falsehoods about fasting. You can search the internet for clarity and end up more confused than when you started. The fact is, fasting can be a very effective tool to improve your …
"In St. Louis, asthma is the greatest health care inequity, with African-American children having an incidence rate greater than 10x that of white children. Children in St. Louis are afflicted by rates of asthma 3x higher than that of the …
"As a family physician for more than 40 years, I have seen countless patients struggling to alleviate chronic pain, with far too many turning to self-destructive coping methods such as alcohol and opioids. Unfortunately, the struggle with chronic pain...
"COVID has brought us new challenges and a genuine opportunity to be part of the critical response to optimize the care we deliver not just to our patients but also to their families and caregivers. I am lucky, blessed to …
"I spent the first three days sitting next to my dad’s hospital bed, watching his chest rise and fall slowly. He was asleep the majority of the time, fighting off something unknown. Anytime he moved, I jumped up from my …
"What these substances have in common is that they are widely considered to fall into the category of psychedelics. What else they have in common is that the vast majority of us physicians learned nothing about them in medical school …
"Greater demands in the U.S. for billing and regulation-related documentation contribute to the excess time burden of EHR systems compared with other countries. A high volume of clinical alerts and other distractions in the EHR, as well as various...
"The COVID-19 pandemic has been raging in the United States for over two years. Health care workers across the country have been chronically pushed to their limits as we navigate difficult situations on a daily basis. The advent of the …
"I remember our first day in the cystic fibrosis clinic like it was yesterday. I cried in the parking garage and struggled to nurse my daughter in the waiting room. And then it happened. That moment is forever etched in …
"So how can health systems and clinicians provide patients with an improved, consumer-friendly experience while also making strides to decrease provider administrative burden and burnout? They need to embrace virtual care beyond just video visits and...
"She kept quiet, but she had planted the seed. Interestingly I did not talk much about work during the appointment, so her question stirred my thoughts. Why did she think it was work-related? I started to look at my daily …
"Pfizer has a particular onus to help intervene globally as one of the largest and most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world. With its immense capital power, Pfizer should shift some of their spending from national ads promoting their...
"Too often in medicine, health care providers assume what patients want or need. Like the crocodile, we may assume all patients would want a tire removed in order to help extend their life – even if the cure meant losing …
"I am ashamed of the callous, avoidant goodbyes that have been made in my name, and I regret the distress caused by this widely accepted standard. The determined patients will figure it out anyway, and the less-resourceful ones are left …
"It turns out that living beings are less like bags of sloshing water, as I imagined in grade school, and more like a stew. While water makes up most of it, water alone is thin and empty of the organic …
"Unconscious bias in health care describes associations or attitudes that reflexively alter our perceptions, thereby unintentionally affecting behavior, interactions, and decision-making. Health care organizations need to be actively discussing this...