"My thoughts immediately went to the tragic loss of one of my best clients, a physician who recently passed away after battling COVID-19. I remember him not only as an excellent physician but even more so as a great person. Unlike many physicians I speak to in the course of…
"Even though there has been a lot of progress, LGBTQ youth are still struggling with discrimination. I am disheartened that 40 percent of LGBTQ youth surveyed by the Trevor project in 2020 seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months, and the amount of LGBTQ youth reaching out to the…
"Taking control of distress is done by embracing the concept of 'mental fitness.' Being mentally fit enables one to overcome the negative emotions that have traditionally sabotaged our lives, both personally and professionally. Similar to physical fitness optimizing our bodily strength, mental fitness promotes achievement in our performance, relationships, and…
"Before COVID-19, I left the practice of medicine for what would turn out to become an entire year. While away, I found a new way of seeing our hearts and bodies as humans in the medical profession, allowing me to return. Here are five lessons I learned in the hope…
"Don’t be the patient that says: 'Doc, just tell me what to do …' Instead, you should ask for information to empower yourself to make decisions about your healing process. Framing questions around the clinician’s experience is always a good starting point; pretend to be the doctor for just a…
"Continuing to do this work the way I was doing it was not sustainable. I needed to get off the merry-go-round. I just didn’t know how. I didn’t think I could stop myself—transplant was my duty, my responsibility, and what I was trained and programmed to do. It was hard…
This episode is sponsored by the Dragon Ambient eXperience at Nuance. The exam of the future has arrived with clinical documentation that writes itself. Recently, I participated in a virtual webinar, “How AI technologies improve the patient experience,” along with Dr. Jesse Affonso, orthopedic surgeon at Cape Cod Orthopedics. We…
"Machine learning is only as good as the information provided to train the machine. Models trained on partial datasets can skew toward demographics that often turned up in the data—for example, Caucasians or men over 60. There is concern that “analyses based on faulty or biased algorithms could exacerbate existing…
"The future of health care will be focused on prevention rather than focused on performing excessive medical treatments, diagnostic tests, and procedures. Many centralized processes, services, products, and entities will become unbundled, including insurance, hospitalization, inpatient and outpatient coding, medical billing, payments, patient care, medical education, licensure, and certification. Physicians,…
"In addition to leaking private information to an unauthorized individual who just happened to ask for Ms. Mann by name, Larry commanded Nigel to worsen this HIPAA violation. Given the tone of his command, Larry must have felt right proud of his informing an aggressive, unconfirmed querent. If so, perhaps…
"Even though prostate cancer patients are anxious to receive treatment, they still want to minimize their exposure to anyone outside their COVID bubble. One procedure that is especially attractive to our patients is focal therapy high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). Focal therapy HIFU is appropriate for patients whose prostate cancer…
"We need to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. The first step is to establish your why. Why do you want the financial freedom to practice medicine because you want to, the way you want to instead of because you have to? Without a why, even achieving…
"My children are embarking on their own lives now. While their paths are not taking them into medicine, I see how medicine has influenced their lives. They are committed to investing in themselves to reach their desired outcomes. They understand the value of dreaming big as they create a life…
"Decreasing the burden of combustion material, whether from a cigarette, a power plant, or an engine, will not only pay off now in reducing COVID-19 but also in future pandemics and in reaping the health care benefits of decreasing the constant toll of tobacco and air pollution in our communities.…
"My world tumbled upside down. I was managing taking care of three children from home, helping them navigate the realities of our new world while trying to keep my staff employed and safe. I sadly said goodbye to many team members as they made the difficult choice to stay home.…
"We can’t escape shame. But don’t despair, dear reader, because shame resilience can be cultivated. There are mental-fitness skills that can be learned which are self-perpetuating. I taught myself these skills and, in doing so, healed my own wounds – you can, too. Once you have the skills to recognize…
"There were many things to be processed about that event. It happened within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, its disproportional effects on the African American community, and a few days after the murder of George Floyd, an African American man killed at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer…
"We created a core team of individuals from different levels and functions who met daily. This team’s purpose was to receive and synthesize department-wide information and transform it into new ways of working for our doctors, nurses, ancillary, and support staff. We had a compelling vision which was shared with…
"Where do we go from here? Conventional wisdom suggests that we can only transform ourselves. This is why I propose that we attempt to recognize the Trump that lies within each of us and to heal him. We are plagued not just by the pandemic but by the human condition—and…
"Social connectedness is the remedy to the COVID fatigue that is running rampant in the United States. We need to stay connected to those we love. At the same time, we must also recognize that life is going on in the age of COVID-19, which means what happened to Mariana…
"As I leaned against the pristine wall, my vision suddenly dimmed. Everything turned gray. I gulped for air. My arms and legs went numb. I felt that drowning sensation I’d had in third grade when a nun pushed my head between my legs to keep me from fainting in church…
"Clinicians want specific things from a pathology consultation. They want a short turnaround time and a clear and coherent report, which can be discussed with the patient and correlates with the clinical findings. Unfortunately, this does not always come to pass, particularly with some smaller or disrupted specimens, resulting from…
"Yoga therapy differs from contemporary yoga in that the profession has a defined scope of practice based on educational standards and accreditation requirements for training schools and yoga therapists. In dealing with pain conditions, certified yoga therapists possess understanding and knowledge of pain theories and pain physiology and may collaborate…
"We eventually got the news that Dr. Rathburn had hung himself from one of those beautiful trees that the wind made dance. How sad. It adds to my own grief. Who had found him? How did he look? Babies born with a nuchal cord have the cord wrapped around their…