My blog represents my personal experiences and perspectives. This includes many anecdotes from my life and from my medical practice. I have been scrupulous to anonymize all medical anecdotes and to avoid ever belittling or making fun of patients. (I often make fun of and criticize myself, my colleagues, and the institutions where I have worked.)
A recent commentary in the New York Times eloquently addressed the phenomenon of psychiatric diagnoses biasing clinicians and resulting in poor care. One concern that arose in the comments was that this might increase the likelihood that patients would withhold crucial diagnostic and therapeutic information, to their detriment.
We see lots of skin problems in primary care.
Simplicity and transparency are key ingredients to organizational health.
I made an extra trip to the nursing home to visit him on his hundredth birthday.
Trust but verify (Doveryai no Proveryai) is a Russian proverb that underlies an important principle in medicine. We need to trust our patients, our tests and our knowledge - but must also always remember to check and verify.
Trust but verify (Doveryai no Proveryai) is a Russian proverb that underlies an important principle in medicine. We need to trust our patients, our tests and our knowledge - but must also always remember to check and verify.
They don’t. They are excellent tools for billing, which is what they are designed to do.
Recent debate about the new definitions of psychiatric conditions raises some interesting questions about the difference between normal in a natural sense and normal in a statistical sense.
I was in line, registering to have lab done in preparation for my coming annual physical, and the person in front of me asked if the lab would send her a copy of her result to her in addition to the ordering physician.
Playing with my three year old granddaughter is teaching me to be mindful of whose world I am in, and to behave accordingly.
In her world, she is the native and I am a tourist. The rules and customs are hers. Things go well when I can relax and let the native guide me. My attempts to impose customs or rules from my world on her world fail spectacularly. As they should.