How do we choose what we wear when seeing patients? Is it by what tradition dictates? Do we need to meet our institution’s dress code? Or do we just like what makes us comfortable? (Those scrubs sure are comfy — almost like going to work in pajamas!) Well, how about choosing what our patients prefer that we wear?
A recent study published in the British Medical Journal found …
The white coat means something more to patients
In a recent issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, Terwiesch and colleagues propose “reimagining provider visits as the new tertiary care.” Initially, their arguments seem sound, even reasonable. Then, they conclude with this:
The conceptual change is to see every engagement with a clinician not as something to be celebrated but as a kind of failure — an inability to accommodate patient needs by any of …
In these tumultuous political and cultural times, it’s easy to presume the future is bleak. However, after attending a conference centered around medicine, public health, and medical science innovation, replete with remarkable stories of human perseverance, resilience, and courage, I felt humbled, inspired, and hopeful. In that order.
Who cannot be awed listening to the one physician who kept treating desperately ill patients when the entire rest of the medical staff …
A beacon of light in these tumultuous times
I learned a good lesson in doctoring from Paul McCartney. Sir Paul, if we want to get formal about it. My wife and I went to one of his shows, and aside from re-living the soundtrack of our lives, we also were struck by how fresh and personal the concert felt. If you consider how many times he’s played those songs and that there were eighteen thousand people in the …
Lessons in doctoring from Paul McCartney
We all know what, in 1888, Rudyard Kipling pronounced to be the world’s oldest profession. But what’s the world’s second oldest? Hunter-gatherer? Nah, everybody did that. Primitive politician? That’s a tautology. Neolithic attorney? Nope. Too similar to the oldest.
I strongly suspect that the second oldest profession was healer/magician. Fire up Mr. Peabody’s Wayback time machine, and you’d probably find that the first healers were regarded as magicians, and the first …
Physicians and magicians are not as different as you think
Monday morning and no place to go. After 35 years of practicing medicine and GI, including a year of eager anticipation, the day had arrived when there were no patients in my schedule. Nor would there be tomorrow. Nor the next day.
I was happily accustomed to a scheduled life. For me it had been decades of awakening early, working out, assembling a breakfast to inhale in the car, kissing the …
A retired physician asks: Am I still a doctor?
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