Health

In the caverns of our bellies, a tempest brews,A fiery storm, a fierce cascade, acid reflux ensues.With burning rage, it surges forth, a churning tide,A searing pain, a bitter plight, we cannot hide. The tender walls of esophagus, its armor frail,Beneath the…

Peter Drucker, the father of modern day management, inspired a generation of leaders with his quote, “One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.” This needs to be reconsidered. Because there’s the fantasy of staying ahead of change and…

In his book, Leaders Eat Last — Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, Simon Sinek discusses the importance of a safe work environment for innovation, productivity and survival. He calls this leader-driven space the Circle of Safety. It is easy…

Goodhart’s law suggests that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. When I first read this I couldn’t help but think of healthcare and the quest for the perfect patient satisfaction score. The problem is that…

This past weekend the storied medical meeting DotMD sold out in two days. How did this happen and what does DotMD deliver that no other meeting does? Experiences. People are desperate for experiences. And the future of meetings is about the creation…

This sounds like a crazy question. But it really isn’t. What does a doctor do? What’s my job with my patients. What is a doctor’s role? Some of what I do is transactional. Simple stuff with clear end-points. Some of it involves…

Medicine is facing a crisis of information. Beyond the increase of biomedical information are rising demands for physician response to portal messaging (MyChart messages) and review of wearable generated data.  More recently health professionals have seen a rise in MyChart messages coming…

I’m big on eye contact with patients. It’s how we show ourselves as humans. The eyes are the windows to the soul. Through them, we build trust, empathy and reciprocity. When I’m with a patient face-to-face it isn’t always possible but I…

It’s the age of the connected baby. But do we need monitors on babies that tell us when they turn over? Of course not. But we have the technology that allows us to know that. So, Silicon Valley and its army of…

See one do one teach one is old school clinical education in a nutshell. Popularized by early 20th century surgical pioneer William Halsted, it captures a medicine-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mindset that defined more than a generation. It’s how I was taught and how I…

The smaller the space you have to communicate the more the preparation you need. I think of this as the law of constraint. When I have lots of space I’m a little lazy and loose with what I deliver. Smaller spaces, however,…

Nobody cares about TikTok. Just like no one cares about electricity. But we all care about is what electricity allows us to do. And people love how TikTok allows them to connect and creatively appear to the world. For health professionals this is…

Many believe that a long visit with the doctor is a good medical visit. This is the long visit fallacy. Years ago I had a partner who related poorly to parents. So after some discussion and counseling he thought he’d fix the problem…

This Journal of the American College of Cardiology Case Reports editorial, A Perspective on the K-Index, by Dr. Robert Califf has drawn a lot of dialog. Through a critical discussion of the K-Index he questions the value of social commentary by non-research…

TikTok health champions and skeptics are haggling on MedTwitter over its worthiness as a platform. It started with some bad physician actors posting stuff that was disrespectful to patients. The disagreement looks something like this: TikTok health skeptics say it’s a place…

This JAMA editorial, Clarifying the Language of Clinician Distress, offers a look at the complexity of physician burnout. The piece suggests that rather than talking about burnout we need to more precisely describe the problem for what it is: Moral distress. Moral…

With the emerging global public health crisis Facebook has initiated coordinated measures to control the spread of coronavirus misinformation. Below are select clips from Facebook’s recent press release, Keeping People Safe and Informed About the Coronavirus, detailing their initiative. Twitter has undertaken…

I’ve always believed that the technology sold to us by Silicon Valley is push, not pull. In other words, these gadgets are solutions looking for a problem — not the other way around. Like the gadgetry showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show,…

The Department of Justice’s criminal investigation of EHR vendor Practice Fusion showcases medical tech’s latest display of malfeasance. As part of a sweeping DOJ investigation Practice Fusion admits that it solicited and received kickbacks from a major opioid company in exchange for…

“You can sleep when you’re dead,” the surgery attending said to me in 1989 when I showed up from the call room a minute late for rounds. As funny as it sounds, I believed him. Surgery work-life balance has never been a…