Someone getting screened for behavioral health or substance abuse should be the same as taking their blood pressure. Blood pressure became a preventative measure because the number of people with cardiac issues became too costly. We're on the same path when it comes to mental health, and we have to…
In this special sponsored episode, I’m joined by Ernie Wallerstein, CEO of Mental Health Technologies, or MHT. MHT is a cloud-based platform that enables health care clinicians to identify patients that may be suffering from undiagnosed or inadequately treated mental health and substance abuse disorders. As a primary care physician,…
“How did you make this patient the protagonist in her own story?” I have this magic wand question, which sometimes I ask patients when I'm confused trying to figure out what's going on or how it can meet their needs. And the magic wand question is: “If I had a…
“How do you maintain the focus on each patient's story in the emergency department?” Curiosity. I feel like one of the first impulses that we have as clinicians, and I think it's a good impulse, is like we want to do something. We want to help. And there are so…
Jay Baruch is an emergency physician and author of Tornado of Life: A Doctor’s Journey Through Constraints and Creativity in the ER. We discuss his emergency medicine journey, poignant cases, the importance of stories in the doctor-patient relationship, why writing is so important, and how physicians can be creative. The…
“We do live in a polar society where we only see things in binary terms. Right or wrong, yes or no. You talk about living in the gray. Sometimes that means you may have to listen to perspectives that you don't necessarily agree with and understand someone from across the…
I clearly understand how unproductive it is to see things in black and white. I believe swimming around in the gray is where the real work happens, and it helps us to really unpack history systems that cause harm. Policies that are unhelpful and living in the gray can also…
"It is impossible to fix a system with an unwillingness to bend. It means working together to accomplish a goal. Living in the gray requires a commitment to growth and discomfort. In the gray, it is possible to hold on to deeply held convictions while bending just enough, leading toward…
People for whatever reason, and many are legit, some are questionable, whatever. It doesn't really matter anymore. I think this horse is way out of the barn. I wish people were a little more nuanced and could ramp up if things got worse, which I suspect they will in the…
I think every physician can look back on their career, and they'll remember a patient not because of some miraculous cure but because they think there was something they could have done differently, something they could have done better, or something they did not do that they should have done.…
"If any of those people get infected, their illness will potentially impact dozens more. COVID infection may now be 'just a cold,' at least for the vaccinated. But no one should think this 'you do you, I’ll do me' approach to the pandemic affects only them. Not by a long…
Like all physical or sensory pleasures, maybe go outside and be in nature and really enjoy that. Regarding intellectual pleasures, maybe instead of just listening to the news that you don't actually really enjoy, maybe put on a podcast like ours and get some intellectual stimulation and enjoyment from that.…
What I find is that so many of us women, especially in medicine, but really all of us, we go through the motions forever, and we're really good at delaying gratification, and I think we learned that through our medical training really early on. We think, OK, once I finish…
"Try incorporating the three small practices of your choice into your day-to-day for two weeks and watch your experience of your life transform. You have worked far too hard to just go through the motions forever. Starting today, you can begin to enjoy all that you’ve created with this simple…
A lot of personal statements tend to be very long. One of the pillars of what I wrote about in my article is to keep personal statements really short and sweet because don't forget that interviewers on an interview day, especially for residencies, are going through multiple applicants a day,…
The role of the personal statement really is to give people a sense of who you are and how you might fit into this program. Who are you as a person? What triggers you, What will make you a good fit for this program? And it is a way to…
"You received an interview invite based on ERAS filters the program set, so you already have your foot in the door. Don’t have them yawning at a two-page extravaganza of your life story that makes them wonder if you know what full stops are and cringing at thoughts that were…
“I know all physicians tend to be perfectionists to get to where we are. Type A. We always love to do well on report cards. How does that make you personally feel?” You nailed it. We are competitive. We got where we were by being competitive, and CMS and our…
"You practice in a rural environment, You're a solo practitioner. As a hematologist-oncologist. Tell me some of the challenges that you face." First, we have a dearth of subspecialty support like infectious disease. We just recently got a pulmonologist. We don't have a rheumatologist. And as therapies for cancer expand,…
With so many demands on their time, physicians today report record levels of burnout. Burnout is caused by many factors, one of which is clinical documentation. Studies indicate physicians spend two hours documenting care for every hour spent with patients. At Nuance, we are committed to helping physicians do what…
Over three liters of fluid, undigested food, bile acid, stomach acid, spilled into her abdominal cavity, and clearly, that is likely why she went into respiratory distress. At the conclusion of the NG tube insertion under anesthesia, they repaired the tear in the stomach as best they could. They cleaned…
I said to him, "How do you go for an NG tube and end up in ICU on a ventilator?” And then my anger spilled over, and I said, “Other than medical incompetence.” And he never looked at me. He never told me his name. He simply stared straight ahead…
"I am heartbroken at the loss of my sister. No, breast cancer didn’t physically kill her, and for that, I am grateful. Its presence in her medical history, however, quite possibly did as it was apparently used as the justification for all that went wrong. Perhaps the young hospitalist will…
“Tell these medical students reasons why they may want to consider general internal medicine as a career.” I always wanted to be able to help my patients no matter what was wrong with them. And, of course, where that starts is in finding out what's wrong with them, what their…