"Confidence and humility are strongly related, but one arises when we focus on self, and the other arises when we focus on others. However, each attribute can become unhealthy when it becomes too extreme, or when we lose the perspective of the other attribute. In the case of confidence, we focus on our worth as a remarkable human being—the fact that we have tremendous potential and deserve compassion and opportunity. But when we lose the perspective of the importance of others, confidence can ve...
Dec 30, 2021•25 min
"Physicians can find — or start — writing workshops at medical conferences, or just about anywhere else, at any time. These workshops can become part of wellness or burnout-prevention events. To interact with other writers, all you need is a champion―someone to organize a time and space for you to get together and share what you’ve written. It’s great to exchange ideas and give feedback to one another, either online or off. Participants in these events can feel energized, enlightened and creativ...
Dec 29, 2021•17 min
"The worst part of the climate crisis is that our kids, my kids, may never get to witness the most beautiful parts of our world because they may, and will, cease to exist without our action and power. As I watch my own kids looking out over the ocean on a clear, cool day in awe at the behemoth of wonder before them, I know they are the ones I am fighting the battle against the climate crisis for, and I beg you to fight too. Beauty in the world and love of our environment and each other are not p...
Dec 28, 2021•12 min
"In 2010, a landmark study from Princeton was published “proving” that money just doesn’t buy happiness. Study participants were asked to compare their emotional well-being from yesterday to today, and it appeared that making more than $75,000 a year didn’t lead to concurrent increases in well-being. Since then, Americans have been flooded with the psychological opium of mindfulness, yoga, and leaning out, urging contentment instead with the status quo. In this column, I’d like to humbly suggest...
Dec 27, 2021•21 min
"The journey to becoming a physician is generally a linear path. Sure — there are exceptions, but for the most part, you can accurately predict what you will be doing in the future. For example, when you are in high school, the next step is college, then medical school, residency, possibly a fellowship, and finally your first job. (That’s approximately 16-18 years of your life!) But what happens when things don’t go on as planned? In the earlier stages of your educational career, it’s easier to ...
Dec 26, 2021•20 min
"I love stories, either told, written, or listened to. Songs tell stories, as does art. Blogs such as the rich content open so many doors for rich conversations. Telling stories is part of who I am. My father loved to tell them, as did my grandfather, whose name I took. They were called bull-sh*tters – and perhaps some refer to me that way at times. In medicine, I find storytelling to be critical. Each time we present a case, we are telling a story. Those residents and students who can present a...
Dec 25, 2021•14 min
"In the months just prior to the infantile spasms, as Josephine’s mind had begun to develop and grow, so, finally, had my love for her. My lack of affection for her up until that point had troubled me, and it was with relief that I had realized I was beginning to look at her with adoration—that a random thought of her was accompanied by delight as often as sadness. I knew that my lack of acceptance had been at the root of my difficulty bonding with her, and I had felt that I was beginning to fin...
Dec 24, 2021•14 min
"Medical debt is the mortal enemy of the patient, the physician, the hospital, the community, the state, and the nation. When we think of others’ debts, we tend to think such debts are their personal responsibility. If they’re unable to pay the debt, it’s their problem. (We make it a You problem, not a Me problem) Society tells us a problem with personal debt is a direct result of bad decisions, poor personal financial habits, profligate spending, living beyond one’s means. We blame those with m...
Dec 23, 2021•24 min
"My practice consisted of patients who suffered from serious injuries and illnesses. Concerning the latter, a significant number had cancer, especially breast cancer. The issue all patient groups have in common to a certain degree is protein calorie malnutrition (PCM). The most dramatically affected are those stricken with a malignancy. PCM leads to increased morbidity, mortality, complications, length of hospital stays, and hospital readmissions. As physicians, we must bring awareness to this d...
Dec 22, 2021•16 min
"To better meet the needs of patients, providers can improve access to treatment and offer more immediate solutions through the use of prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs). With technology, providers can now deliver programming aligned with proven mental health treatment methods, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, and connect teens and young adults to an immediate, safe, and effective treatment option. Technology cannot replace good patient relationships, but the future of mental health c...
Dec 21, 2021•19 min
"Many of us suffer in silence for myriad reasons. Being a physician with infertility presents a perfect storm of stress, anxiety, guilt, and shame – all of which we know don’t contribute to managing any medical problem. Consider what it’s like to undergo a typical cycle of in vitro fertilization. You administer nightly hormone injections to grow your follicles in preparation for an egg retrieval procedure. The process usually takes 1-2 weeks, but you don’t know exactly how fast your follicles wi...
Dec 20, 2021•18 min
"Patients communicate immense amounts of information through body language. The primary understood, universal body language is choking. Anywhere in the world you go, if someone is choking, they use both hands to grab their throats. No matter what country you are in or what language is spoken, you can recognize someone choking and provide aid if trained. Body language is also understood to convey various subconscious emotions – crossed arms can be used by someone who is angry, frustrated, or scar...
Dec 19, 2021•17 min
"Medicine is not a business You fools. Healing is your blueprint, activated to complete itself. A doctor does not broker it, The best anyone can do is align you With what you should be, And stay out of the way. (Like a teenager setting off an illegal firecracker.) Mostly, you pay the doctor for the alignment, And the nurse To keep the doctor out of the way. If you’re not ready, to get on with the business of what you should be, You come back later. Or, maybe, next lifetime. It’s not complicated....
Dec 18, 2021•18 min
Welcome to an expedited episode of The Podcast by KevinMD. Trevor Bedford is a computational biologist and infectious disease scientist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He was selected as a recipient of the 2021 MacArthur Fellowship and can be reached on Twitter @trvrb .
Dec 17, 2021•18 min
"The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and it is not uncommon for us to gain up to 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. But what if we do not want to put on some insulation? What can we do? I specialize in medical weight loss, and my first recommendation would simply be to be aware of the food around us and recognize that seeing food in itself can be a trigger to eat." Angelice Alexander-Martin is a family physician. She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, " D...
Dec 17, 2021•17 min
"The victims of this now distorted concept of liberty are ones that we physicians encounter every day. The one that inspired this essay for me is an 11-year-old boy that I saw three weeks ago. He is a patient of mine in my pediatric practice who came to see me with typical respiratory symptoms that led to a diagnosis of COVID-19. While he recovered uneventfully, his father got sick the next day and died from the same illness five days later. Like the vast majority of people who die from COVID-19...
Dec 16, 2021•15 min
"The U.S. Department of Education recently announced some major changes to the rules and qualifications around the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. Now, for a limited period of time, borrowers may receive credit for past payments made on loans that would otherwise not qualify for PSLF. The good news is that public service loan forgiveness is now available to more people. The bad news is that there will be more people waiting in line to have their federal student loans waived. This...
Dec 15, 2021•16 min
"Finding out I was gene-positive had hit me harder than I could ever have imagined. How was I to know that my decision to get tested would have such an impact on my life? All of the rehearsing I had done in the weeks leading up to my results appointment proved useless. At the genetics clinic that day, the doctor told me most people feel better after about three months. As I sat on the hard plastic hospital chair, staring at the creased piece of paper containing my test results, I thought, That d...
Dec 14, 2021•15 min
"I’m not brave. I’m just me. Full of light and lifted by my light. You see, when you strip away the darkness and lies that others surround you with, you’re left only with your light. The genuine you. Moving forward in life in ways that are authentically you. Not because it’s brave to rise above and be disconnected from your humanity, but rather because when you become un-brave, you step into your own courage. Courage has understanding of what you’re doing and who or what you’re doing it for. Cou...
Dec 13, 2021•17 min
"Some policymakers may be wary of not using case numbers as the primary metric to guide public behavior and policy. As cases become more complex, however, health departments should still monitor infection numbers, but guidance should be tied to hospitalization metrics. When rising cases do not reliably predict hospitalization surges, hitching Covid policies to cases alone is no longer effective policy — or good public health." Monica Gandhi is an infectious disease physician and co-author of the...
Dec 13, 2021•20 min
"We orthopedic surgeons are disappointed with the growing lack of enthusiasm in your reports. When I began in practice almost 15 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see a report of a post-reduction or post-surgical X-ray that read, 'alignment is now anatomic' or, at a minimum, 'near anatomic.' What happened? What did we do to deserve reports like, 'Overlying cast obscures fine bony detail. Alignment is improved from pre-reduction imaging,' after we closed reduced a mangled looking extremity and got ...
Dec 12, 2021•14 min
"Right now, I think that people need to understand that this virus is clearly mutating to become more contagious, and that is in its evolutionary best interest. That's what viruses do. That is not the same thing as a virus having an advantage by making us more sick or breaking through our vaccines. There's no advantage there. So we don't yet know about that. So what I really want your audience to know and to think is, do I care about infection or do I care about outcomes? Sometimes those things ...
Dec 12, 2021•22 min
"Physicians can exert their influence in a health care environment to put the patient-physician relationship at the center of the enterprise. Working with middle-market employers (between 200-2,000 employees), some companies pair bold doctors with innovative employers to bring exceptional value to employee health benefits. There are no pre-authorizations for medical decisions, but doctors are held accountable for best practices. Customized health benefits offered within the ERISA framework allow...
Dec 11, 2021•14 min
In this special episode of The Podcast by KevinMD, I'm on the other side of the podcast mic. It was an honor to be interviewed by Jonathan Baktari, MD on his show, the Baktari MD Show . In this hour-long episode, Life as an MD Online , I discuss how I got started, online reputation and social media, the KevinMD platform, my medical career, physician burnout, online misinformation, how COVID impacts medicine, and much more. Thanks again to Jonathan Baktari who can be reached at BaktariMD.com ( ht...
Dec 10, 2021•1 hr 8 min
"By denigrating midwifery care, pathologizing the natural process of birth, and instilling fear of complications and pain, doctors persuaded women to give birth at the hospital under their care. By touting the benefits of anesthesia, forceps delivery, episiotomy and promoting in-hospital birth, doctors and hospitals were able to capitalize on the new specialty. Interventions of increasing risk and complexity, and their routine use — without proof of benefits for the 80 percent of birthing people...
Dec 09, 2021•20 min
"This survey study examines the self-reports of personal attacks and sexual harassment of physicians through social media outlets. A total of 108 physicians (23.3%) reported being personally attacked on social media, with no significant difference between female and male physicians. In contrast, women were significantly more likely than men to report online sexual harassment." Shikha Jain is a hematology-oncology physician who blogs at her self-titled site, Dr. Shikha Jain . She can be reached o...
Dec 08, 2021•16 min
"The collective resiliency of the medical education community shone through the challenges of the past year. In medicine, physicians must adapt to all situations, and GME is no exception. Even in a pandemic, everyone adjusted as needed. Program coordinators and faculty were flexible and creative, while applicants remained passionate and pushed past roadblocks. It seems that there is no situation to which GME cannot adjust. With the financial and time-saving benefits of an all-virtual and/or hybr...
Dec 08, 2021•18 min
"My mother screamed. It meant my father needed a doctor — now. But why? We just visited the hospital days before to refill his drugs. He would be better if he used the drugs. Magic drugs. That is what he called them. I stood up from the mat where I slept beside them to find him not moving. But why? When he got sick, he moved. He moved a lot. Then, he got better and stopped moving. But he always moved first. My mother noticed me. Her eyes reminded me of a movie. The warrior dropped her sword in t...
Dec 07, 2021•18 min
"Practicing culturally relevant care means we can account for the social determinants of health, barriers to access, and the emotional disconnect that results from the status quo, one-size-fits-all approach many patients have come to expect. It helps us reach into underserved communities and lift them up, which is essential during a pandemic that disproportionately affects low-income and diverse Americans. If we, as clinicians, can align around the fact that we exist to serve all patients, we mu...
Dec 06, 2021•21 min
"You have more power than you realize. It’s no secret that medical providers feel structurally powerless in our chaotic health care system. Control over the volume, pace, and elements of our work often rests squarely in the hands of others. But know this: Your own personal power over your work remains formidable and fully intact. If you’re stressed out, burning out, and dreading Mondays, you have the power to make quality decisions about your work and life — decisions that honor who you are and ...
Dec 05, 2021•18 min
