A Message for Doctors, on Christmas in the Hospital
Please don’t race through rounds. Be a little generous with your time, your thoughts and words. Patients may need more examination, a bit of hand-holding, besides extra diligence.
Remembering a Warm-Hearted Patient
When I was a resident I worked in a general medicine clinic. One afternoon each week, I’d get more dressed than usual and split off from my inpatient team around noon to go see patients in another building, outside of the hospital. Today, I’m reminded of a man I saw there and treated for two […]
Benlysta, A New Treatment for Lupus
Lupus, an autoimmune disease, turned up on the front page, right side of today’s Wall Street Journal. It cropped up, also, on the first page of the New York Times business section, and elsewhere. Scientific American published a nice on-line review, just now. The reason is that yesterday the FDA approved a new, monoclonal antibody […]
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 […]
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 […]
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…