I work in a place where nobody calls me by my name.
They all address me by a moniker of their choosing that I have asked them not to use. I have asked them to use my name. Aside from a few who respect my wish, most of my co-workers just call me by the impersonal-sounding phrase they’ve selected instead. It creates …
I’m a physician. But please don’t call me doctor.
Kaitlyn Elkins was a medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina and a member of the class of 2015. She excelled academically, named the valedictorian of her high school class and graduating summa cum laude from Campbell University. She wrote poetry in her free time. She had a cat, lovingly named Gatito. On April 11, 2013, just …
Medical student suicide: It’s impact is devastating. This case proves it.
We’ve all heard it said that learning medicine is like drinking from a firehose. Yet many students and schools don’t use one of the most effective study techniques available to them. Spaced repetition is a powerful, evidence-based study technique that can enhance learning and long-term retention of medical knowledge. Medical students and schools could both benefit from understanding and using spaced repetition to produce more knowledgeable and better-informed doctors.
Over a …
Want to enhance medical education? Use spaced repetition.
One of my favorite physician sayings is, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” Which means that it’s better to do nothing than to do something that doesn’t help. As I move through my career, I find myself agreeing. I am endlessly amazed at the number of things we do for no good reason, and that patients come to expect, also for …
The problems with a low salt diet
As someone who has practiced hospital medicine up and down the East Coast for the last several years, I’ve had the fortune of working with some absolutely terrific colleagues. The hospital environment is by its very nature a busy and hectic one — where we all put our heads down and work tirelessly at the coalface for hours on end. Doctors …
Doctors: Be sure to thank the case managers
There was once a woman whom I met for the first time when she came to the ER, on death’s door, metaphorically. I told her and her family just how seriously ill she was, and how slim the chances of survival. We all agreed on that day to take a shot at it — at survival, that is — despite lousy …
We all have the ability to touch other people’s lives every day
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been classically described as “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” At first look, this well-accepted approach to clinical medicine appears not only completely reasonable, but also somewhat obvious given the immense amount of research available for academic consumption.
EBM has been repeatedly preached as the gold standard of clinical care across all medical …
The challenge of evidence-based medicine to the new physician
No one wants to hear that they have a disease. And yet everyone will develop some degree of degenerative disc disease (DDD) — or degenerative spine disease — over the course of a lifetime. DDD refers to a combination of age-related and wear-and-tear-related changes that occur within the spine over time. It is very common and a natural part of aging.
Most …
A neurosurgeon teaches us about degenerative disc disease
I used to be a surgical resident in the U.K. One day, I was a little dispirited during a brutal call, and my senior resident asked, “Do you love surgery?”
“I like surgery,” I replied.
“If you don’t love surgery, love it unconditionally I mean — like loving your child — you will be unhappy.” He warned.
I really liked surgery. I like radiology. …
Should I go into radiology? A radiologist gives honest answers.
Some months back I read an interesting interview with Jonathan Skinner, a researcher who works with the group at the renowned Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. More than anyone else I can think of, the people at the Dartmouth Atlas have studied and tried both to understand and to explain the amazing variations we see in how …
The problem with cowboy doctors in health care
I didn’t really notice him standing in line. But how could I? Hundreds of kids came through the high school gym yesterday. His turn for the heart and lung portion of the high school sports physical had come. He said he was going to play baseball and basketball. How could he with that arm he carried so carefully? I am not …
A high school physical that shook this student to the core
What is it like for physicians to fail their ABMS Maintenance of Certification® (MOC) program examination? How does the largest member board of the ABMS, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), respond to doctors who fail their secure examination?
As I continue to confidentially collect information from physicians who have failed their MOC examination, I thought it would be important to publish …
So you failed maintenance of certification. What now?
An excerpt form Baby City: An Inside Look into Labor & Delivery.
I am going to make this medical student cry.
I don’t know how I know it, but somehow I can sense it. I know it the second she walks into the resident room on labor and delivery at Cadence …
A medical student on her obstetrics rotation: Behind the scenes
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There he stood at our beach party, the family doctor I grew up admiring. I timidly approached his circle of friends to announce I had gotten into medical school and would start in the fall. He stopped to attention. His friends stood watching. I couldn’t conceal my smile. I thought, “He is going to be so excited for me!”
“Get out now.” …
Leaving medical school for a startup. And with no regrets.
I’ve been a doctor for more than 20 years, and I hate to break it to you, but it’s time I came clean: We lie. Doctors lie. Not always. Not necessarily on purpose. But we do.
Sometimes the lies are to our patients. Sometimes, the lies are to our families. And sometimes the lies are to ourselves.
But, nonetheless, we lie. A lot. …
A disclaimer before I even get started on this post.
Some of you who know me or work with me will think that by writing this post I am talking about you or even attacking you. I am not. If you’re especially sensitive, don’t read any further.
I am simply writing something that has been kicking around in my head for a long …
Casual Fridays don’t have a place in medicine
I suffered from extreme nausea during my pregnancy; I had triplets, and I’m pretty sure I had a triple dose. I never threw up, but you know how your mouth salivates the moment right before you vomit, that sensation that sends you running to the bathroom? I had that. All. Day. Long. For four weeks.
By day four or five I was …
She took Zofran and her son had a heart defect. Here’s why she’s not suing.
Each year children ingest an array of foreign bodies including coins, magnets, and a new subset of batteries known as button batteries. Awareness of this small yet very dangerous foreign body is important for parents to understand so they can act quickly if their child is suspected of ingestion.
What is a button battery?
A button battery is a cylindrically shaped object measuring …
So your child swallowed a button battery. Here’s what you need to know.
A while ago, I wrote about “The secret lives of doctors.” The post must have struck a nerve because it went viral, maybe because it helped patients to realize that doctors are human.
We doctors can’t really know how human we are until we become a patient.
That happened to me recently. And it wasn’t pretty. You need to know the …
Being a patient is tough. Here are 3 reasons why.
For many women, pregnancy is a wonderful experience. There are, however, many changes and challenges the mom-to-be can expect, and back pain is one of them. The good news for pregnant women is that the development of severe or debilitating low back pain is very rare.
The incidence of symptomatic low back pain that is severe is about 1 to 2 percent. …
Back pain during pregnancy: Advice from a neurosurgeon
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