"I can attest to the tremendous power of simply noticing these rhythms and attending to them. It’s part of a larger attempt to live a more authentic life. So much of my time over the past 20 years has been vying to achieve someone else’s standards or to live the way I 'should.' I should exercise in the morning since it’s healthier! I should shut down my computer at 5 p.m. so I can be focused on my family! I should block out all distractions on the weekends! The fight against the 'should' is a co...
Dec 04, 2021•13 min
"My mother, bless her ninety-year-old heart, is slowing down. The things that made her happiest — getting to church, visiting friends, taking walks, and wandering the aisles in the grocery store —are increasingly difficult. She worries that her lack of energy will soon make every activity impossible. It is 2005 and she is living alone in Chicago, about ninety miles from where my wife and I live. My father died suddenly the year before, and she is settling into the life of a widow. She has always...
Dec 03, 2021•15 min
"Institutional real estate private equity funds have dramatically outperformed all other methods of investing in real estate such as syndicated real estate deals, crowdfunding, and REITs because larger real estate funds have the best deal sourcing capabilities that enable them to identify and execute opportunistic acquisitions with speed and at the most attractive pricing. Syndicated deals, crowdfunded deals, small deal sponsors, and REITs just cannot compete with institutional investment funds....
Dec 02, 2021•28 min
"While much of the conversation around financial independence is tied to the ability to retire early, the real prize is flexibility. I hear a lot of 'I love what I do and will work until I die' amongst physicians. Not so fast. Your goals and priorities will likely change as you get older. And sometimes, you don’t have a choice. A close family member needs extra care or passes away. Your child has special needs or other needs that require your time and attention. You never know what life may brin...
Dec 01, 2021•19 min
"If you treat chronic pain, or are someone living with it, remember this: Changing the brain can change pain. Addressing emotional health directly impacts physical health, because brain and body are always connected. Pain psychologists can serve as pain coaches – it doesn’t mean you’re crazy, and it’s not 'all in your head' (it’s in your brain!). Try biobehavioral interventions like CBT, biofeedback, and mindfulness, and demand that your insurance company reimburse these treatments. If you’re a ...
Nov 30, 2021•20 min
"For twenty years, I defended doctors when they were sued, and now I coach female leaders from all industries on how to advocate for themselves and their potential with the tools of a trial lawyer. I know that when doctors are exhausted, distracted and powerless they’re more likely to be sued. They’re also more likely to burnout, less likely to enhance the patient experience, and more likely to have complications. And I know there is another way." Heather Hansen is a communications consultant an...
Nov 29, 2021•16 min
Welcome to this special episode of The Podcast by KevinMD, where I interview two infectious disease physicians on the COVID Omicron variant. They share their unique perspective on this threat answer the following questions: How do these early days of the Omicron variant contrast with past variants? What do they think about the travel restrictions? How has the media covered Omicron? What are the best-case and worst-case scenarios? And about Omicron keeps them up at night? Nahid Bhadelia is an inf...
Nov 28, 2021•28 min
"While individual doctors have obligations to both the individual and public health, their first concern is their patients. And these decisions have to acknowledge fears and respect the stance. Providers must balance reassurance with acknowledgment, care, data, and the intent to 'do no harm.' It is undeniable that the COVID vaccination has saved countless lives and will be crucial to come out of this crisis. In particular, the OAZv has many advantages for global use. But the success of a vaccina...
Nov 27, 2021•18 min
"The variant keeps me up at night a little bit because it has 32 mutations in the spike protein, in contrast to the Delta mutation. But it's not just the mutations. In terms of biological plausibility, it's plausible that it could be more evasive against immunity. Not just vaccines, but potentially reinfection. What really worries me is seeing the signals line up in the wrong way. It first started in Botswana, but it's surging not just in one part of South Africa, but across six different provin...
Nov 27, 2021•31 min
"Cultivating compassion for ourselves and others is a practice in which we release judgment, anger and heal our emotional wounds. We can then move forward to a version of a better world where we have evolved to a new beginning. Change is always happening, and that is our constant. What we focus on while it happens is what will determine how much we will suffer or thrive as we go through it. So, as we emerge through this time, whether as a health care worker, a parent, a newlywed or whatever your...
Nov 26, 2021•16 min
"Mr. Rodgers, I’m glad you’re feeling well. This isn’t altogether unsurprising given your younger age and elite physical fitness (though cases in young unvaccinated people can and have become severe) and I hope you continue to feel well as you quarantine. The medical and scientific community works on data, lots and lots of data. The process of running clinical trials and publishing data is rigorously vetted and peer-reviewed. We do not have good data that supports the use of ivermectin. In fact,...
Nov 25, 2021•31 min
"The COVID-19 pandemic challenged health care systems and patients’ personal economic capacity, leading to approximately six million adults losing their dental insurance. Additionally, the World Health Organization and the American Dental Association recommended dentists to limit their practices to emergency and urgent dental care. In the list of these diagnoses requiring emergency care, jaw pain (temporomandibular disorder (TMD) that includes several clinical problems involving the temporomandi...
Nov 24, 2021•16 min
"Thanks for gathering today in this anonymous detached space. Since it’s unlikely that we’ll ever publicly convene in a circle on metal folding chairs, I’m reaching out through this letter. You can peruse this in private and perhaps see a piece of yourself here. As a non-practicing physician who speaks openly about my decades of suicidal ideations, I know there’s a thirst for connection on this topic. Colleagues pull me aside to whisper that they, too, have felt “that way.” See this letter as my...
Nov 23, 2021•22 min
"I left my primary care practice earlier this year to focus on life coaching. Why did I leave? Because I wanted to do more and make a bigger impact. I remember how eager I was to complete medical training as I approached the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought I could finally relax and enjoy life as an attending after all the delayed gratification from becoming a doctor. All I ever wanted was to help people feel better and live a life of ease myself. However, I was disappointed and frustra...
Nov 22, 2021•18 min
"Economics taught me that I didn’t have to culture cells in a dish to do interesting and life-changing work. I built a habit of being inquisitive and intellectually curious about the world around me because I learned in undergrad that our human, flawed world contains elegant experiments, puzzling oddities, and fertile ground for inquiry. That profound change in mindset is the most important lesson I could have learned from my undergraduate major, and I’ll always be a grateful ex-economist." Dan ...
Nov 21, 2021•15 min
"Disrupting weight stigma and bias in health care starts with calling it out. The power of stories and shared experiences highlights the collective voice. I’m coaching TikTok Followers to own their health power and start speaking up during clinic visits to make sure they get their questions answered. Future directions and next steps are to disrupt weight stigma and bias by speaking up, calling it out, and calling on doctors, nurses, and all of health care to do better. Back to TikTok!" Karla Les...
Nov 20, 2021•25 min
"No matter how extensive or well-developed your capacity for empathy may be, you cannot feel empathy for everyone all the time. Whether we’re talking about doctors who have never been patients, or clinicians who have never faced discrimination, we know that people’s ideas can change, when properly educated and supported. In a randomized, controlled trial, one of the most exciting findings within my own research into the malleability of empathy looked at physicians of six different medical and su...
Nov 19, 2021•20 min
"I believe there is a formula that can reduce the risk of burnout and save primary care, rooted in one key objective: Remove work from primary care doctors and nursing staff’s plates immediately. Easier said than done. And that’s where technology and clinical navigation must be leveraged — to assist, facilitate, streamline, and support. Where EMR messages, not requiring doctor expertise, are responded to by clinical navigators harnessing technology to guide patients to the right outcome. Where t...
Nov 18, 2021•19 min
"My brain is still struggling to comprehend the battle for the status quo a physician faces each day; one who must, by default, be cognizant of the lurking dangers of an opioid prescription, while also helping the patient on their swiftest way to recovery, led by the very same guidelines. But what happens when the patient slips on the road to recovery and out from underneath the physician’s caring cloak towards substance abuse? Whether the patient’s role changes at that very threshold is a diffe...
Nov 17, 2021•19 min
"I am a woman of history who stands up and tells the truth, irrespective of what other people say. I remember the words of the late Representative John Lewis, 'Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year. It is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.' Black female physicians are not OK, but it is our collective duty to do something abo...
Nov 16, 2021•17 min
"I am exhausted and sad and disappointed and discouraged. I am losing faith in humanity. Where is the 'love your neighbor as yourself'? Where is the willingness to help each other? Where is the solidarity of those first days? Physicians have gone from being heroes to being villains. We have dedicated decades of our lives to learning how to care for you, but now our knowledge and expertise are being thrown back in our faces as not good enough and not as believable as your cousin’s friend who saw ...
Nov 15, 2021•15 min
"The truth is, we were all drowning, alone, and hiding behind the image of perfection. Clearly, each of us secretly thought that the others had it all figured out. We were so afraid of admitting weakness or asking for help, so we kept it to ourselves and muddled through, burnt out and miserable, terrified of being judged for our vulnerability. When we negatively judge ourselves for needing help, we end up judging others who need our help too. Our patients feel this undercurrent of judgment when ...
Nov 14, 2021•14 min
"What are altcoins, and should you be investing in them? I cannot speak to whether investing in altcoins is appropriate for you. Altcoins are a highly volatile and risky asset class that offers the potential for high returns. Every investor must decide whether they are willing to bear the associated risk. When evaluating thousands of coins to select the best opportunities, it is critical to have an appropriate framework to work from. That is why I am sharing my 5-step framework." John Stillson i...
Nov 13, 2021•19 min
"Go ahead, give yourself permission, summon the compassion and grace you’d bestow on your best friend, and tell yourself, “This is the breadth of the human experience, and I’m only human.” There is immense beauty and strength in that vulnerability. I lied to myself for too long, couldn’t see the road ahead through the cracked glass until it, and I, in turn, shattered. Once those broken shards that obscured and distorted the path forward have been swept away, only then can the clarity of a strong...
Nov 12, 2021•17 min
"When the medical profession—a career you have pursued for years, a career you love and trust to do no harm does something to shatter the foundations of your sense of trust and worldview, the resulting trauma can be severe resulting in loss of sense of self and life-altering betrayal grief that mirrors the stages of acceptance of one’s own death (or the death of a piece of one’s soul when swept up in the betrayal cascade)—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. As a witness to imm...
Nov 11, 2021•25 min
"I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder as a preteen after my teenage sister died. I attempted suicide three years later. This would be the first of several attempts and the first of countless times I felt my life was not worth living. But I am not unique. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 person dies by suicide every 11 minutes. My depression is like a chronic autoimmune disease — constitutively present at a low level with flares. But there’s no Humira for depr...
Nov 10, 2021•15 min
"I am here to testify that it is possible, and I am not alone in this specialist direct care market. There are other specialists’ practices like mine, hidden gems for patient care. During my journey, I learned specialists are thriving to remove the “middlemen” and reconnect with patients. Patients are eager to shop for their health, discover transparent pricing and excellent quality. Patients and physicians desire mutual accountability. Since the direct primary care movement started approximatel...
Nov 09, 2021•17 min
"At the hospital, the nurse is the one who is at the patient’s bedside around the clock. When the patient has to go to the bathroom or needs help to sit up in a chair, he or she calls the nurse. The nurse is the one who is changing the diapers for the elderly; she is the one cleaning the sputum and the spilled urine; she is the one holding the patient’s hand and stroking his hair while he is having a painful procedure done. She is the one arranging the flowers and picture frames in the room. She...
Nov 08, 2021•18 min
"Many patients, doctors, nurses, and health care administrators appear to have a seat on the blimp with little concept of how the game has evolved over the years and is being played now. They may have attended the game in the past, but they likely haven’t seen the action from 5,000 feet above the field—and seeing the health care picture from the big picture distance can create some impetus for adapting to the new rules. We need to not only explain the new rules of the game but also show how pass...
Nov 07, 2021•14 min
I did not realize I was a perfectionist. I was far from perfect. It was not until I listened to a master class on perfectionism from a physician coach that I had my “aha moment.” I am now working extremely hard on training my brain to be an imperfectionist. To do that means to let go of the mental constructs that I have created for myself. In particular, I had to let go of the narrative that said to me: You are not someone unless you look like the epitome of success. I was a young African-Americ...
Nov 06, 2021•13 min
