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.)
Drs Groopman and Hartzband, in Your Medical Mind, reference the phenomenon of ‘creeping paternalism’ in medicine. How true.
Becoming a good person seems like an obvious goal, a no-brainer. Despite that, not many of us really try. And fewer succeed. What's the problem?
I am old enough to have been able to watch the nurse practitioner role in medicine evolve from a misunderstood and distrusted ‘physician extender’ to a real colleague. It will be interesting to see how the doctorate of nurse practice (DNP) evolves.
The language of medicine is highly evolved and complex and allows clear, detailed, specific and unambiguous descriptions. Except when it’s not.
Joseph Campbell observed that the more a culture felt threatened or controlled by unpredictable forces, the more rituals it would evolve, the more complex they would be, and the more vigorously they would be enforced.
At the suggestion of a colleague, I submitted one of my blog posts to the FMEC ‘This I believe’ contest. To my surprise, it was selected as an award winner, and this past Sunday, October 22nd, I attended their annual Northeast meeting to read my essay (accompanied by a slide show of my photographs) and receive my award.
At the suggestion of a colleague, I submitted one of my blog posts to the FMEC ‘This I believe’ contest. To my surprise, it was selected as an award winner, and this past Sunday, October 22nd, I attended their annual Northeast meeting to read my essay (accompanied by a slide show of my photographs) and receive my award. It was tremendous fun and energizing, and has renewed my determination to return to teaching family practice residents, at least part time, over the next year.
The essay in its revised (for presentation) form is published here below the fold…
Those who are too smart to engage in politics…
…are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Ernest Martin Hopkins said that intelligent leadership requires an intelligent constituency.