What cancer and teatime taught me about burnout

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [How to stop making patients pay the price for poor communications](. 30% of malpractice lawsuits cited communication as a contributing factor. Learn how you can improve your hospital’s communications to enhance care team coordination and patient care. [Read now](. By 2025, it’s projected that nurse practitioners will represent almost 1/3 of the family practice workforce -- will that impact patient safety? [A new study examines the top malpractice risks NPs face in primary care](. More than 51% of physicians attribute burnout to excessive administrative burdens and bureaucratic duties, among other things. Learn [simple changes]( in daily workflow that one doctor made to add up to [5 hours back]( into each day to create healthier patients and happier doctors. [Video]( What if your clinicians spent far less time trying to communicate and far more time collaborating as a team? Just fast, accurate, and secure communications that fit within their workflows. [Watch now](. [Patient misidentification can lead to medical errors, patient harm, and costly inefficiencies]( for providers. Get the facts on patient misidentification, and [learn how to avoid it]( from organizations that use biometrics to do so. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Mar. 19, 2018 [The truth about plastic surgery chains]( Over 17 million cosmetic surgery and minimally invasive procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2016. With the increasing popularity of cosmetic procedures, it seems nearly everyone is out to get a bite of the apple. Cosmetic surgery chains are growing in size and popularity in an attempt to cash in on this market. Examples […] [What cancer and teatime taught me about burnout]( Chipper in his bow tie, our senior physician approached balancing a tray of milky black tea in his hands. He passed each of us a steaming mug. The scones followed, warm and crumbly, slathered with golden butter and glistening raspberry jam. We sank into the tweed couches of the hospital lounge eager for a pause. […] [Intern year is still universally hard. Intern year is also universally great.]( 4:00 p.m. Right on time. I am walking down the street with my brother on his first visit to me in residency; I’m only two weeks in. I turn to him: “Wait a second.” I place my hand on the cement wall next to us, and I start to heave. “Um … are you OK?” […] [When your first food allergy reaction takes place in the air]( Can you imagine flying home from a family vacation and having a first-time anaphylactic reaction in the air? Did you know that airlines are not required to stock their planes with easy-to-use auto-injectors that any adult or child could operate? Francine’s family was flying back home from vacation on American Airlines. Her 10-year-old son, who had […] [Denying payment for emergency care: a physician defends insurers]( We live in an era of demonization. Political adversaries are not opponents; they are villains. Commentary that contrasts with our views is labeled”fake news.” Presumption of innocence? R.I.P. Civil discourse has become a quaint memory. Why would one debate respectfully when today’s tactic is to talk over and demean your adversary? On the morning that I prepared this post, I read […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Listen to this powerful podcast]( by SVMIC about a doctor who struggled with alcohol and drug addictions from his early youth, through medical school, and well into his medical practice. [Listen now](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Medicine: How can you not be fascinated by this job?]( “Any recent antibiotics? Steroids?” I asked my last patient of the day, a healthy looking young woman with what she described as a yeast infection that was driving her crazy. She’d had many of them, and they were always coming back, but she had only used over the counter topicals. I knew she needed oral […] [The challenge in oncology: balancing hope and reality]( Part of the challenge in oncology is the balance between hope and reality, and that is probably the most important thing to strive for for patients living with metastatic disease. Often times, the important conversations relate to treatment options, goals of care, and patient preferences (i.e., how frequent the visits to the doctor and for […] [Are physicians ready for single-payer health care?]( Single payer health care is enjoying a boomlet in public opinion. A Pew Research Center poll released in June 2017 found that, “Overall, 33 percent of the public now favors such a ‘single payer’ approach to health insurance, up 5 percentage points since January and 12 points since 2014.” 58 percent of those surveyed by Pew said that […] [How high-deductible plans are a bait and switch]( If you get health insurance through your job, beware: you might be picking up more of the cost of your medical care than you realize. With increasing frequency, employers are directing their workers to the kind of high deductible, high out-of-pocket insurance plans that leave workers financially responsible for a surprising portion of their health care expenses. […] [Incorporate side hustles to your primary care practice]( Hustles are hustles, and side hustles add a little on the side. But if you want to maximize your income. You have to innovate. When I started as an employed medical physician at the beginning of my career, I was overjoyed to make X. After years of watching money go out the door in medical […] [5 ways to be financially successful as a physician]( I was doing a procedure on a child last night, and the mother said to her son: “I want you to be a doctor, make lots of money and buy me a house.” Of course, it was 11 p.m. on a Friday night, and I was making my riches doing a procedure on an anxious […] [The implicit biases of gender stereotypes in medicine]( I was lucky to be raised in a place and time where I have not had any significant barrier in my way because I am a woman. I have been allowed to make my own choices and pursue my own path in life. My gender never deterred me from achieving what I set out to […] [Doing too much hurt this patient]( It’s early March. I walk quickly past the ambulance bay, shivering as the doors open. Paramedics push a stretcher into the hall as a limp body gasps for air. “Doc,” the tired man says. “I need help.” “What happened?” I say. “You look terrible.” “My belly is killing me.” He grips his stomach. ”I’m going […] [How Amazon health will change your future]( Amazon has finally done it. What we’ve long expected to be coming — their debut into the world of health — is now official. But what this means for the future of health care reaches far beyond new insurance models and fee structures. It’s going to involve Amazon Echo, and Alexa, and artificial intelligence, and […] [0% financing: It’s not always a good deal]( I recently was asked about taking a low or no interest car loan and using the money they had earmarked for a car to instead invest for a higher return. This “I can get a better return” game is very common and can be a dangerous game to play. Often it is used as a […] [How to have a life in residency]( Medical students and residents become accustomed to living life in year increments. Four years for medical school, three to five years for residency, a couple years for fellowship, research, and so on. While many of us like to think we are putting our life on “pause” as we complete our medical training this just isn’t […] [Match Day: the perfect ending to the medical school experience]( The first week of medical school you became a new person. Assigned a cadaver and some partners in your first anatomy lab, the gravity of the endeavor struck you to your core as you slowly unzipped the cadaver bag for the first time and met “Ernie” (as you later named him) and wondered how he […] [When doing “nothing” really matters]( She came up to me and said, “You saved my life.” I remember meeting this woman while I was walking my dog in a woody park near my home and I was taken aback. She didn’t look like someone who should be dead; she was young and vibrant and out for a hike. Then she […] [When medical coders blame physicians]( An interesting paper in CMAJ Open reports on a series of interviews with coders concerning their perceptions of their interactions with doctors. The study was done in Canada, but it rings true to what we experience in the U.S. The fundamental objective of coding is the same: to translate information about the patient’s story into a series of numeric ICD-10 […] [MKSAP: 38-year-old man is evaluated during a periodic health maintenance visit]( Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 38-year-old man is evaluated during a periodic health maintenance visit. His friend was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus, and the patient expresses interest in being screened. He is asymptomatic and reports no symptoms of polyuria or polydipsia. He […] [The AHRQ is in the line of fire. Here’s why you should care.]( For the past 30 years, a little-known U.S. health agency has supported and produced volumes of groundbreaking research on how to make health care safer, less wasteful, and more effective. Dubbed “the little federal agency that could,” AHRQ has accomplished this feat with a small fraction of the budgets of its higher-profile cousins, the Centers for Disease […] [How this emergency physician’s shift really went]( She is 61, and she can’t help but smack her lips together repetitively. She has no teeth, and the curvature of her spine makes her a miniature version of what she once was. Her frizzy hair is a purple-gray tone, and there are dark particles of something in the knots alongside her left temple. Her […] --------------------------------------------------------------- If a friend sent you this email and you want to subscribe, go to [KevinMD](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 345 Hudson Street New York NY 10014 USA [Unsubscribe]( | [Change Subscriber Options](