A prayer from an emergency physician

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors Alarm fatigue is a serious issue: 87% of clinicians say alarms for non-actionable issues occur frequently in their hospital. [Start combating it today]( by downloading this essential guide. [Get it now](. U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, discusses the [opioid epidemic's huge impact]( on communities and health services in the U.S. Tech-savvy practices are [ditching manual phone calls]( to communicate with patients. Here are [5 ways]( you can too. [Case study]( Discover how University of Maryland Capital Region Health improved staff communications and reduced the time to deploy critical codes by 50%. [Read now](. Health care needs a purpose-built identity governance strategy. [Find out why](. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Nov 26, 2018 [A prayer from an emergency physician]( Dear Lord Jesus, I just finished my shift in the ER. Of course, you knew that. But I was thinking about how often I’m ungrateful and irritable. I know that I complain about rules and regulations, about time-stamps and metrics and satisfaction scores and all the rest. I know I’m that guy. I get annoyed […] [Is it still worth it to go to medical school?]( Medicine has changed immensely over the past 40 years. Not only has the drugs, surgeries, and procedures changed, but the culture and economics of medicine have changed as well. Radiologist and blogger Xrayvsn enlisted physician finance bloggers young and experienced to write posts on the common topic of generational perspectives of the past, present, and […] [Let’s be more mindful of respecting the time of our patients]( I recently attended a lunchtime session on the Choosing Wisely initiative. This public and professional awareness endeavor attempts to educate the public and health care providers about procedures that do not benefit patients, and that may ultimately cause harm. It was an interesting educational session and while most of the content was not new to me, […] [The evolution of residents’ hours]( It was the 24th hour of my call shift, and I was running on fumes. Despite my weariness, I could see the first rays of morning sunlight coming through the window in my patient’s room. It was then I knew I could make it to hour 30 (quitting time). It was grueling to keep going, […] [Lewy body dementia and a farewell to a physician’s father]( When I finished my training, I was taught that the vast majority of dementia was Alzheimer’s disease, with occasional cases of multi-infarct dementia as well as odd syndromes such as Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease and genetic, traumatic, toxic and tumor-related syndromes. Parkinson’s disease, we were taught, caused a tremor and freezing up of a person’s movements and […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Thousands of physicians are browsing this job board](. They love its selection of over 12,000 openings across the U.S.. [Physicians are finding opportunities they almost missed](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Why do we still use CD-ROMs for radiology images?]( In the United States, any person who has tried getting their own (or their patient’s) radiology images from another hospital or practice will find the practice painful. Here are several obvious reasons why the CD-ROM — briefly the darling of large data transfer — is a truly terrible way to share radiology images in 2018: They […] [3 reasons why we should care about the health care experience]( The health care experience is so much more than a buzzword to be talked about in administrative circles. Some physicians I encounter (a minority, but still enough) really scoff when they hear this term. Responses I’ve heard from doctors include: “Hospitals are not hotels!” or “If that means giving our patients as much Dilaudid as […] [Physicians should never leave the lane of gun violence]( Anyone following the debate around gun regulation knows it is a hotly charged issue. On November 7th, doctors got dragged front and center after the NRA issued the statement: “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, […] [Being financially secure is different than being financially independent]( It is official. I have left my day job and have two months off before starting my next day job thanks to being financially secure. As many of you know, the Tubb’s Fire has led to many changes in my life over the past year. We had many decisions to make and now, 13 months out, are […] [Is your smartphone leading to burnout?]( Burnout and dealing with its symptoms has become a hot topic in the last decade. It’s a problem that has multiple contributing factors. Some of those factors are thrust upon us and are beyond our control, such as government regulations. Other factors are self-imposed, and thus under our control, such as volunteering for extra call […] [Before you delve into your DNA, be sure to seek out a well-trained genetics team]( For $199 and a tube of saliva, I found out that I have straight hair and green eyes. Mirrors have been telling me this my whole life for free. But as a genetics counselor, I wanted to learn more about the recreational home genetics tests that have been captivating people. What I was left with […] [The increasingly obfuscated medical algorithms for simple problems]( A physical therapist, commenting on my blog, recently shared an excellent point of view with me: As a therapist myself, I don’t know that I’d want to be betting on that differential diagnosis of tear, rupture, etc. when giving online advice. What is good treatment for one, can be disastrous for the other. Seeing someone […] [A smarter EMR will make visits more patient-focused]( What do our patients really want from us? When a patient calls up to schedule an appointment, or sends us a message through the patient portal, or calls our front desk staff to leave a message, what is it that they’re looking for? I think, more than anything else, our patients are looking to us […] [MKSAP: 82-year-old woman with a 1-week history of urinary incontinence]( Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. An 82-year-old woman is evaluated for a 1-week history of urinary incontinence with lower abdominal discomfort. She reports no dysuria, fever, or back pain. Medical history is significant for hypertension and allergic reaction to sulfa drugs, which cause a generalized rash. […] [Make peace with stress in the ER]( This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. Working in the emergency department or emergency room is not for healthcare practitioners who want to just chill. Although television’s portrayal of the ER on dramas like “ER” or “Chicago Med” is admittedly high on drama, life and work in the ER really are high pressure. In […] [Medicine: noble profession or big business?]( In 1976 I graduated from medical school and proudly joined the medical profession. Thirty-seven years later, I retired as an employee of the biggest business in the country. In 2016 the medical industry was responsible for 3.3 trillion dollars of expenditure, comprising 18 percent of the United States GDP. For perspective, there are only four […] [Call obesity what it is: a disease]( In 2013, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced its decision to classify obesity as a disease, moving against the recommendation at the time of a group studying obesity. Yet there are still those who believe that obesity is not a disease but rather a “condition,” and this has downstream ramifications for health policy, health care […] [Don’t wait to take action on gun control]( “Active Shooter in Squirrel Hill.” This was the subject line of an email I received on the morning of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. It was from my children’s school, which is located less than a mile from the scene of the shooting. “I am working … to put in place a plan for […] [Stop dehumanizing physicians. Lives depend on it.]( I want to talk about dehumanization in medicine. And, yes, part of this discussion is about our patients. But another part — just as important — is about the dehumanization of us, the doctors. Most of us have had that moment in the third year of medical school when we are sitting in a mandatory […] [Doctors need to learn more about nutrition]( I was misinformed about medical school. Growing up, I wanted to help people become healthy. After four years at the Ohio State University Medical School and three years of a family medicine residency, I still did not know enough to accomplish my goal. My training allowed me to become a disease-care expert, not a health […] --------------------------------------------------------------- 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](