The Emotional Epidemiology of Vaccination
The only preventative medicine that actually prevents disease are vaccinations. Our world is an immeasurably better place since the advent of vaccines. Yet there is a complicated psychology that hovers like a fog around the idea of vaccination. More
Drowning in a Sea of Health Complaints
The patient was a classic “worried-well†type of patient. When she unfolded a sheet of paper with a brisk snap, my heart sank as I saw 30 lines of hand-printed concerns. More
Rx: Writing
Writing has always been a prominent part of medicine. Doctors write “histories†of their patients all the time. Increasingly there has been interest in writing by patients. More
Meet Dr. Chan….
“Dr. Chan and Mrs. Geng eased out of their chairs in the waiting room using their matching wooden canes, the kind distributed by the hospital, free of charge. At 89, Dr. Chan was stooped and frail, his body paper-thin. He seemed as though he might topple over from the breeze generated by the opening and … More
The Debilitated Muse
Poetry is a supremely sensory art, both in the imagining and in the writing. What happens when the poet faces illness? How is the poetry affected by alterations of the body and mind. More
More on Mammograms
A monolithic message on mammogram screening for breast cancer sidesteps critical nuances. More
ERs for Primary Care
George Bush once famously (or infamously) commented that health care is indeed available for all: You just go to the emergency room. More
A Tale of Two Phone Calls
There’s a lot we can learn from animals in many facets of life — Lord knows, a nice massage behind the ears could do a lot of us some good — but I am consistently impressed by how much smoother veterinary medicine runs. More
Social Mission of Med Schools
What exactly is the mission of a medical school? Is it to train the best and smartest doctors? Is to tend to our nation’s health? Is it to further medical knowledge? More
Abortion: The View From Both Sides of the Street
A dispassionate discourse on the abortion wars in America? Not something that seems possible, at least in the current polarized culture in the United States. Into the fray comes the documentary “12th and Delaware,†a quiet movie that seeks to illuminate rather than bully. More
Palliative Care: From the Get-Go
The scientific world finally produced the data to support what seems so obvious: Palliative care belongs in the beginning of cancer treatment, not just at the end. More
The Patient’s Voice
Not long ago I learned that these side effects listed on the package insert are not the ones the patient actually complains of. No, they are the symptoms the patients’ doctors choose to report, the doctors’ impressions of what the patients are describing. More
Endorphins and Overeating
As a primary care internist, my practice spans the common adult ailments—diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, arthritis. It is hard not to avoid the difficult truth that obesity, while perhaps not causing all of these illness, certainly exacerbates them greatly. More
Can We Measure a “Good Doctor?”
What do quality measures actually measure? Can they tell us who is a good doctor, or what makes a good doctor? “Quality measures” offer patients a seductively scientific metric of doctors’ performance — but can easily lead them astray. More
Owning Up to Medical Error
Precisely two weeks after completing my medical internship,I proceeded to nearly kill a patient. July marked the startof my second year of residency at New York City’s BellevueHospital, and it was my first time being fully in charge of a patient. More
