The Immeasurable Value of Continuity of Care

Today I visited my internist for a checkup and flu shot. We talked about how I’m doing, and she examined me, and we discussed what procedures I ought have done and not done. She’s been my doctor since the summer of 1987, when I was an intern at the hospital. We reviewed so much that […]

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Reducing Cancer Care Costs: The Value of Physicians’ Cognitive Work

We’ve reached what may be my favorite of the proposed ways to reduce cancer care costs, published in the NEJM by Drs. Smith and Hillner. Idea Number 8 is to realign compensation to value cognitive services, rather than chemotherapy, more highly. What the authors are saying is that we’d save money if oncologists were paid more for […]

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Reducing Cancer Care Costs: Oncologists Need to Get a Grip on Reality, and Talk about Dying

We’ve reached the second half of our discussion on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care. The authors of the NEJM paper, Drs. T. Smith and B. Hillner, go on to consider how doctors’ behavior influences costs in Changing Attitudes and Practice. Today’s point on the list: “Oncologists need to recognize that the costs of care are […]

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Give Doctors a Break

In a heartless op-ed in yesterday’s paper, an anesthesiologist argues that medicine shouldn’t be a part-time endeavor. Dr. Sibert makes a firm introduction: “I’m a doctor and a mother of four, and I’ve always practiced medicine full time,” she boasts. “When I took my board exams in 1987, female doctors were still uncommon, and we […]

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On Pleasant Behavior And Being A Patient in the Hospital

Dr. Wes has a short post today, How to Optimize Your Care While Hospitalized that got me thinking. He writes: …A lone doctor listening to some highly experienced and capable nurses, reflecting on their work: “If the patient’s nice, it’s a lot easier to want to go back in that room with them. Their reputation […]

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Some Articles I Authored A While Ago

This post, on my research in cancer immunology, is strangely personal. At one level, what follows is nothing more than a list, a narrative if you will, a sketch of a formative chunk of my career and personal history. I’ve wanted to put this out there (here) for quite a while, but couldn’t: It’s been […]

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Dr. Greenfield is Human

A few days ago I read that Dr. Lazar Greenfield, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, resigned as the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons over flak for authoring a Valentine’s Day-pegged, tacky, tasteless and sexist piece in Surgery News. The February issue is mysteriously absent in the pdf-ied archives. According to the […]

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May I Call You ‘Doctor’?

Last week I considered the relationship between the Prince Albert and his speech therapist in The King’s Speech. One aspect I wanted to explore further is why the future king initially insisted on calling the practitioner “doctor.” In real life, now, patient-doctor relationships can be topsy-turvy. This change comes partly a function of a greater […]

Posted in Communication, Empowered Patient, Life as a Doctor, Life as a Patient, Movies, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , 2 Comments on May I Call You ‘Doctor’?

Considering the Significance of a Doctor’s White Coat

A while back, a first-year med student asked me if I think physicians should wear white coats. There’s a debate about it, she mentioned. Indeed, in the spring of 2009 the AMA considered an unenforceable mandate that physicians in the U.S. not wear white coats. The news was getting around that doctors spread infection from […]

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Why It’s a Good Idea to Get a Second Opinion, and Maybe a Third, But Rarely a Fourth

A few years ago I started writing a book on what it was like to be a cancer patient and an oncologist. This morning I came upon this section on second opinions: Is it OK to get a second opinion? Definitely. And there’s no need to be secretive about it, or to worry about hurting […]

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I Feel Your Pain (not)

A tweet hit me on Sunday evening, from a stranger: @Mibberz I’m saddened by how many ADULTS can’t get their #rheum 2 understand the level of severity of their pain.What hope is there for my daughter? I half-watched an on-line exchange about the issue, and then went about my family’s dinner preparations. The message came […]

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Note to Self and to Physicians, Division Chiefs, Hospital Administrators and Everyone Else With Responsibilities for Other Humans

— (and to Other Physicians, Division Chiefs, Hospital Administrators and Everyone Else With Responsibilities for Other Humans):   Yesterday I started but didn’t complete a post on the interesting concept of the Decline Effect. I got caught up with several extra-ML responsibilities that kept me busy until very late last night, which became morning before […]

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Why I Went for My Screening Mammogram

I was afraid to get a mammogram because I didn’t want to learn I had cancer….I feared having a “false positive,” and undergoing multiple tests to evaluate abnormal images that would turn out to be nothing…I didn’t have time for all that…

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, Essential Lessons, Life as a Doctor, Life as a Patient, Oncology (cancer), Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Why I Went for My Screening Mammogram

Why Physicians Shouldn’t Tweet About Their Patients Or O.R. Cases

As a patient who’s been there, under anesthesia more times than I care to remember, I can’t imagine anything much worse than knowing while I’m unconscious my doctor might be on-line or even just dictating tweets instead of concentrating on me, my arteries and veins and spine and…

Posted in Communication, Health IT, Life as a Doctor, Medical Ethics, Privacy, Social MediaTagged , , , , , 6 Comments on Why Physicians Shouldn’t Tweet About Their Patients Or O.R. Cases

Back to Basics – But Which Ones?

A front-page story on the Humanities and Medicine Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, here in Manhattan, recently added to the discussion on what it takes to become a doctor in 2010. The school runs a special track for non-science majors who apply relatively early in their undergraduate years. Mount Sinai doesn’t require […]

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Living Like It’s Shark Week!

Today is the start of this year’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Dialog from NBC’s 30 Rock, Season 1, Episode 4 “Jack the Writer” (2006)*: Tracy Jordan: But I want you to know something… You and me, it’s not gonna be a one-way street. Cos I don’t believe in one-way streets. Not between people, and not […]

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The Checklist and Future Culture of Medicine

…Poka-yoke, a Japanese term for rendering a repetitive process mistake-proof, is familiar to some business students and corporate executives. This concept, that simple strategies can reduce errors during very complex processes, is not the kind of thing most doctors pick up in med school. Rather, it remains foreign.

Posted in Future of Medicine, health care costs, health care delivery, Life as a Doctor, Medical Education, Policy, Public HealthTagged , , , , , , , , 6 Comments on The Checklist and Future Culture of Medicine

An Ordinary Day

If there’s one obvious thing I didn’t learn until I was well into my forties it’s this:

Don’t let a day go by without doing something you feel good about.

This message is not unusual, cryptic or even interesting. It’s simple, really so trite you could find it in most any “how having cancer changed my life” book available in bookstores and on-line.

Why say it again? Everyone knows we should relax and enjoy sunny weekend days like this.

Because it’s a reminder to myself, as much as for some readers and maybe a few fledgling doctors out there. One of my…

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Are Doctors Necessary?

Ten years ago, my colleagues and I squirmed in our swivel chairs when a few tech-savvy patients filed in bearing reams of articles they’d discovered, downloaded and printed for our perusal.

Some of us accepted these informational “gifts” warily, half-curious about what was out there and half-loathing the prospect of more reading. Quite a few complained about the changing informational dynamic between patients and their physicians, threatened by a perceived and perhaps real loss of control.

How a decade can make a difference. In 2008 over 140 million Americans…

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How to Avoid Death in the ICU

It was sometime in April, 1988. I was putting a line in an old man with end-stage kidney disease, cancer (maybe), heart failure, bacteria in his blood and no consciousness. Prince was on the radio, loud, by his bedside. If you could call it that – the uncomfortable, curtained compartment didn’t seem like a good place for resting.

Posted in cancer treatment, Communication, Empowered Patient, Essential Lessons, health care costs, Life as a Doctor, Medical Ethics, Palliative Care, Patient Autonomy, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments on How to Avoid Death in the ICU
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