Why Doctors Don’t Take Sick Days
From day one in medical training, the unspoken message is that calling in sick is for wimps. Most doctors ignore their symptoms and resist taking the day off unless they are sick enough to be hospitalized in the next bed over. What explains this toxic brew of denial, ignorance and bravado? More
When Doctors Share With Patients
Doctors often “self-disclose” to patients in an attempt to empathize. But contrary to what might be expected, such self-disclosures often turned out not to be helpful in addressing patients’ concerns or building rapport. More
The Challenge of Diabetes
A diagnosis of diabetes often triggers a flurry of life changes and medical interventions. But diabetes–like all chronic illnesses–is a marathon, not a sprint. More
Doctors’ Bad Habits
We doctors constantly lament how difficult it is get our patients to change their behavior. But the truth is, we are equally intransigent when it comes to changing our own behaviors as caregivers. More
More Power to the Placebo
The hospital ward was quiet for the night, except for “the howler.” The patient and I were both pretty exasperated with each other. He was sullen and cranky; I was exhausted and at my wits’ end. More
Respect and How it Impacts Patient Safety
When we tolerate a culture of disrespect, we aren’t just being insensitive, or obtuse, or lazy, or enabling. We’re in fact violating the first commandment of medicine: Do No Harm. More
When Doctors Feel Fear
I remember the first time I laid eyes on an actual amygdala, after slicing through a brain with a repurposed kitchen knife in neuroanatomy class. That’s it? I thought. That nickel-size splotch tucked below the temporal lobes was the seat of my fears? It was monumentally underwhelming and even lacked the poetic almond shape that its Latin name connotes.
More
New York Times review of “What Doctors Freel”
This book’s hallmark is honesty, particularly when it comes to the emotional fallout of her medical mistakes. More
Tolerating Ambiguity
When faced with ambiguous situations, most of us—quite humanly—want to run for the tantalizing veneer of the certain. We doctors pride ourselves in the scientific girders of modern medicine. Much of the time, though, we function in an ambiguous zone, without clear-cut answers. More
Uncertainty Is Hard for Doctors
As a group, doctors dislike ambiguity. But much of the time, therefore, we function in an ambiguous zone, without clear-cut answers. More
Medical Errors and the Culture of Shame
It was probably our eighth or ninth admission that day, but my intern and I had given up counting. I was midway through my medical residency, already a master of efficiency. You had to be, or you’d never keep up. More
Creativity in Medicine
“What are you doing creatively these days?” It’s not a question you hear commonly. Medicine is a field with a strong history of creativity, but its daily practice feels less and less creative More
Incidental Finding?
A small adrenal mass was “incidentally noted” on my patient’s CT. But once the incidentaloma had been given life, so to speak, it was no longer incidental. We were now obliged to run some highly complicated—and expensive—lab tests. More
Medical Check-Ups: Waste of Time?
A new report concluded that general health checkups for adults did not help patients live longer or healthier lives. So is it time to scrap the annual medical check-up? More
Lab, Interrupted
All academic medical centers rest on a tripod—patient care, education and research. The effect of Hurricane Sandy on the third leg of that tripod—research—has gotten the least attention, partly because rescuing cell cultures just isn’t as dramatic as carrying an I.C.U. patient on a ventilator down flights of stairs in the dark. But, of course, there is an incontrovertible link between those cell cultures and that patient. More
