"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 medical school. Humanitarian outreach will help reinvigorate physician workforces immediately, allowing physicians to…
"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 confidence that I was the right person for the job…
"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 your claims are handled, don’t you think? Today we’re going to…
"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 they should be able to control them. Depending upon their…
"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 me for feeling burdened by this life, for feeling it…
"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 myself like a reluctant nursing baby. On the rare occasions…
"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 metabolic health, increase insulin sensitivity and help you lose weight.…
"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 national average, and asthma is currently the leading chief complaint…
"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 isn’t going away – and more alarming is the fact that…
"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 do this work every day and carry such a deep…
"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 chair and stood where he could see me just in…
"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 or residency, as most psychedelics are classified as Schedule 1…
"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 other inefficiencies (such as locked computer screens and repetitive sign-in requirements),…
"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 COVID-19 vaccine, although a powerful tool in our crusade against…
"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 look toward asynchronous telehealth. Asynchronous care allows providers to treat patients for common, low-acuity…
"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 routine. I was able to recognize where I needed to…
"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 vaccine product in a country that has large booster vaccine availability…
"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 the only thing that made their unique life worth living.…
"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 confused, hurt, and more likely to avoid important medical care."…
"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 molecules from which organisms are built—the stew thickeners. Water alone…
"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 subject at the highest level to find gaps and learn where to dedicate resources for improvement, even if it means…
"We need to address the underlying preventable factors that cause more Black Americans to die of heart attacks and strokes and suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes complications than white Americans instead of focusing on non-existent biological differences. I would like to see the scientific disciplines unite to call…
"There is something about physically putting pen to paper, that connection between your mind and your body that is just very health-inducing. And it takes time. And often we do not dedicate the time to taking care of ourselves and something as simple as writing in a journal, writing these,…
"Two issues drive teen substance use: drug availability and perception of risk. Availability: Today’s teens know that obtaining substances is far too easy. For example, 70 percent of high school seniors say marijuana is either “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain. Seventy-seven percent say getting their hands on alcohol…