"Taking stock of all these experiences, I feel like I have no answers. They lead me to a space of unrest and dissatisfaction for not having a pill that would instantly drop 10 kilos, cure hep E, curb food craving or resolve a heartache. But I feel grateful for bypassing most life hurdles that people live with, those hurdles that life chooses for them rather than themselves." Natasha Khalid is a physician in Pakistan. She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, " Pay heed to the littl...
Jan 29, 2022•15 min
"Inaccurate patient records aren’t just an inconvenience. They’re a risk. The EHR might speak for the patient when they cannot speak for themselves, and if it’s wrong, it’s a serious liability. In lieu of any system-wide improvements to EHRs, I try to be vigilant. I ask the medical assistants to review the medication list at every appointment, if I can. Luckily for me, my chart’s problem list is accurate now that the HNHSA diagnosis has been removed. All the same, I worry that if a medical assis...
Jan 28, 2022•17 min
"The reality of the last two years is that almost all of us have experienced some mental health disorder symptoms, and that mental and physical health are equally important components of overall health. We call these subclinical symptoms, or symptoms that are there but that don’t meet full criteria for a disorder. Most of us have experienced subclinical symptoms, or psychosocial stressors, since the start of the pandemic due to the stress that we’ve been under. These can include things like divo...
Jan 27, 2022•19 min
"A hundred years ago, women lived one year longer than men, but now they live five years longer than men. And things are getting worse. Currently, the lifespan of men in the U.S. is declining due to alcohol, opioids, and suicide. These trends need to change. I take care of men. I’ve been a urologist for almost 25 years and have seen thousands of men as patients, many of whom have shared their most personal thoughts and feelings with me. I’ve followed many men in my practice for 15 to 20 years an...
Jan 26, 2022•20 min
"Studies show that those physicians with negative online reviews were more often scored poorly due to non-physician specific causes. In my career, I’ve read comments from patients that said they were not satisfied with their provider because they didn’t like the color of the walls in the exam room. Another mentioned that tea wasn’t offered in the waiting room, just coffee. Surveys are not necessarily bad, but they have changed the way we interact with patients. Doctors are now feeling pressured ...
Jan 25, 2022•19 min
"All the faceless young men who are brought to his operating table, prepped and draped, broken and bleeding, are finding their experience of war bears little resemblance to their reveries of war. They should have known better. At corner taverns in Chicago, Albuquerque, and Murphysboro, there were tired veterans with scars and limps; men with faded names of regiments or slogans like “Semper Fi” tattooed on their biceps; men with creased faces and shuttered eyes, who quietly nursed schooners of be...
Jan 24, 2022•14 min
"No matter what, your healing work matters. No one should tell you otherwise, and nothing can change that, not even a shortcoming. You provide healing in a way no one else can. Care for yourself, and you can be the healer you truly wish to be." J. C. Sue is a family medicine resident. He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, " Self-care should now be your plan ." Reflect and earn 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CME for this episode....
Jan 23, 2022•14 min
Welcome to a special episode of The Podcast by KevinMD. In this 60-minute episode, I partner with DrFirst , a pioneer in health IT for over 20 years. We bring together physicians with different backgrounds to explore information overload and physician burnout. Dr. Sameer Badlani is chief digital officer, M. Health Fairview, a major health system in Minnesota. He is also adjunct faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Colin Banas is chief medical officer, DrFirst. He was an internal medicine h...
Jan 22, 2022•54 min
"For me, my own personal stories of opioid patients come to mind, including one who keyed my car when I stopped prescribing his opioid after an acute injury. I think of some local opioid overdose deaths in my community. I would love to hear what other doctors and clinicians have to say about these issues, like the 'not responsible' verdict and the Sackler family running away liability-free and still worth billions of dollars. Does anybody feel like the opioid companies were pushy in the ‘90s and...
Jan 21, 2022•16 min
"Advanced analytics can provide the insights needed to understand social determinants and help develop interventions that assist patients in overcoming some of the challenges and adverse environmental and social factors that are barriers to healthier behavior. Analytics are needed to support the team-based approach to care delivery. With advanced analytics bringing together data on clinical and social needs, as well as health behaviors, providers and payors can enable effective care coordination...
Jan 20, 2022•19 min
"Guiding kindly illustrates mentorship, whether it be in the dojo or in an academic medical setting. Regardless of one’s stage in medical training, certain errors in patient management will be made … this is part of the learning process. It is the role of the mentor (i.e., attending physician to resident, resident to medical student, attending physician to medical student) to help identify these errors, determine their causes, and work through solutions, while being cognizant of the educational ...
Jan 19, 2022•17 min
"For too long have gardeners allowed our food supply to be dependent on mysterious logistics. We have criminally allowed our own food growing capacity to be displaced. Growing something you eat and trading with people who grow what you don’t are ways to be less reliant on Big Food and its failed connections and also to help your neighbors. We have the opportunity to subvert the dominant supply chain. Local gardens and gardeners should be at the center of a new, three-part food supply chain — gro...
Jan 18, 2022•19 min
"The lack of diversity in academic medicine is a significant issue that can compromise our patients’ health and the education of our training clinicians. There is a vicious cycle in which there are few black academic physicians, leading to seemingly fewer available mentors for black students, which in turn leads to even less of them pursuing careers in academic medicine. As a medical community at large, it is imperative that we understand the implications of this problem, not just on the black p...
Jan 17, 2022•15 min
"Through empathy-based training, physicians and other health care providers learn the skills to have honest informed consent discussions without causing undo fear, while also preparing patients for all possible outcomes. Empathic skills make for better physicians, better communications, and better conversations for all outcomes. With a strong alliance, a reduction in medical professional liability claims is the result of increased trust, better understanding and expectations of all possible outc...
Jan 16, 2022•21 min
"Today, more students are disclosing and speaking out about their disability and how their disability is an asset to their way of learning and what they can bring to their field. Across college campuses, more student-led organizations are forming to promote initiatives to identify and remove structural and systematic barriers to ensure equal access in all aspects of the educational experience. While aging clinicians may have had to live in the shadows with their disabilities, we have a new gener...
Jan 15, 2022•25 min
"The classic thinking has always been that a career in medicine is more than just a job; it is a passion, a calling, an anchor of identity. There is a pervasive stigma in medicine against the self-advocacy of the worker. Bedside care providers who push back against their work/life imbalance are often made to feel guilty for putting themselves before their patients. Antiwork challenges those assumptions and inspires health care workers to reevaluate what role they want their jobs to play in their...
Jan 14, 2022•19 min
"The weekend after Isabelle’s discharge, I take my shoes outside onto the driveway. The sky is a brilliant blue, and green tinges of leaves poke through shells of buds; the wind slips through my fleece. I scrub the spots of blood with an antibacterial wipe, and tan shoe polish comes off instead, leaving the burgundy spots haloed and dark. Next, I smear shoe polish into the leather and brush away the brown curds of polish with a horsehair brush. The drops of blood remain. All these years later, t...
Jan 13, 2022•12 min
"The way to do this is by recognizing the power of words. I don’t mean fervently declaring one’s position and arguing why those who disagree are wrong. There has been way too much of this, and health professionals are no exception. Rather what’s needed to deliver the best health outcomes for the most people is listening, engaging and having something to offer that misinformation peddlers don’t — interventions that work. It’s also time to recognize the importance of innovating how those of us in ...
Jan 12, 2022•15 min
"Stress is just part of the alcohol con trick. And the truth is that every benefit we have ever imagined alcohol giving us it doesn’t. It is a drug, and it works the same way as all other drugs. Many of my clients are doctors and nurses, and some are in the role of advisor for alcohol issues, and yet are themselves caught in the alcohol trap. This shows how endemic the problems are and how little is understood. The great news here is that when you start waking up to the truth, you are beginning ...
Jan 11, 2022•16 min
"Crowdfunding models of paying for health care maximize the probability that all members’ eligible bills will be paid in full each month. These models come without the burdens of skyrocketing premiums and deductibles. Unlike traditional models, members aren’t chained to yearly contracts and have more flexibility and autonomy with crowdfunded models." Andy Schoonover is a health care executive. He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, " Open enrollment: It’s time to leave your insur...
Jan 10, 2022•17 min
"Virtually everyone understands the importance of major medical insurance as it relates to unexpected high-dollar care for severe injuries and significant medical conditions, but the value equation for health insurance is quite different when applied to coverage for primary care services. The full potential cost for primary care services is neither expensive nor unpredictable. Routine and preventive care and the management of most acute illnesses and the majority of chronic disease processes by ...
Jan 09, 2022•22 min
"The data are remarkable and promising, though beyond the numbers is a bigger picture. Each data point represents a life – a mother, uncle, grandparent, loved one, friend. Technological advances in image guidance and therapeutic delivery are allowing us to extend life – and quality of life – for patients who previously thought they were facing sudden death. Seeing these patients celebrate another birthday, travel somewhere new, and achieve major milestones is humbling and what drives my work eve...
Jan 08, 2022•18 min
"The unvaccinated patient is the addicted person, the overweight patient, the smoker in the waiting room. Our antipathy toward them endangers their health, maybe their lives. The unvaccinated will not be convinced with stigma. They will be convinced with integrity, sincerity, and love. Stigmatization has never been an effective health intervention. And that’s exactly what these reflexive responses to the unvaccinated are. It’s not righteousness, as if righteousness ever helped in an examining ro...
Jan 07, 2022•19 min
"Physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, medical assistants, and other health care workers are a finite resource. They don’t grow on trees. And, though we all seem to deny it, they are human. The physicians I coach often wonder what they are doing wrong that their lives feel impossible. They are baffled by their inability to finish work on time, get the number of open charts down, clear their in-basket. They worry about the effects on their families and on their health and about whether...
Jan 06, 2022•20 min
"Six air changes per hour and HEPA grade filtration of indoor air for our children is an investment in their futures for long beyond when the COVID-19 pandemic fades from view. We know there is poor indoor air quality in multiple schools, from inadequate ventilation to air pollution to wildfire smoke. Kids learn better and have less absenteeism in healthy air. COVID-19 has just added fuel to that fire. Let this be a torch to light our way forward to healthy indoor air- starting right now. Most i...
Jan 05, 2022•19 min
"I imagine I would have, as I’m sure so many others do, headed to the Internet, reading both accurate and inaccurate information. While much of my visit with my genetic counselor feels like a blur, I left that meeting with a list of answered questions, referrals to specialists, contact information for virtual support groups, and a friend by my side holding my hand. I am grateful that I know about my mutation and live by the phrase “knowledge is power.” But when I imagine the thousands of people ...
Jan 04, 2022•18 min
"The medical profession hasn’t changed. Our credibility hasn’t changed. Our commitment to care for you – to adore you, to grieve your diagnosis and what it means for you and your family – hasn’t changed. Our advice hasn’t changed. I’m grateful for your trust in me. I wish it didn’t require a cancer diagnosis to win it." Cynthia Cooper is a hospitalist. She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, " I’m grateful for your trust in me. I wish it didn’t require a cancer diagnosis to win i...
Jan 03, 2022•13 min
"When you enter medical school, you put your trust into an unspoken promise: Work hard, pass all your classes, and you’ll come out as a doctor after four years. While mostly true, this perception doesn’t take into account the residency application process and the possibility of graduating without a position as a physician-in-training. This thought didn’t cross my mind until I decided to apply for otolaryngology, one of the most competitive specialties. I went into the application season hoping f...
Jan 02, 2022•22 min
"I am sitting in hot springs deep in the dark and crisp air woods – naked. It has been a day of lectures and workshops at a retreat with my fellow physicians. We are all naked in the effervescent, warm bubbles of the springs. In the dark, I can recognize who people are by the fluorescent necklace each wears. You know, the kind that you crunch and shake to activate that the kids get at a party. The kind you give the kids to be safe when trick or treating in the neighborhood. In many ways, these w...
Jan 01, 2022•12 min
"I recognize that finding time for staff training and making sure the training is effectively practiced are challenges in a busy clinical setting. But taking care of patients means that both goals must be met to ensure safety, quality, and best possible clinical outcomes. As one who speaks and writes regularly about patient advocacy, I am more comfortable than most when it comes to finding my voice and speaking up – professionally and constructively. It may not be so easy for others. The bottom ...
Dec 31, 2021•20 min
