Don’t assume that you know what a doctor looks like / 11 things your psychiatrist wants you to know

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [From devices and Wi-Fi to BYOD and security]. Spok surveyed 550+ health care organizations to examine the current state of mobility strategies in hospitals and spot trends over five years. [Get the results now]. [Is your hospital communication system trapped in the dark ages?] Just like a medieval page boy, pagers are annoying and inefficient. This leads to delayed patient care, frustrated providers, and potential HIPAA breaches. Learn why you need to ditch your [Page Boy] today. 49% of plastic surgery lawsuits claim improper performance of surgery -- but [only 5% actually had substandard care]. Read the [new study on top risks in plastic surgery], and learn why patient compliance and realistic expectations hold the key to safe care. Infographic: [Coordinating the patient journey]. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Today: Oct. 24, 2016 [Don’t assume that you know what a doctor looks like] Recently, an African American female physician was prevented from providing help to a passenger in distress on a Delta airlines flight because she didn’t fit the flight attendant’s image of what a doctor looked like. The racial and gender issues that this event highlight are readily apparent. As a South Asian, I have to say […] [11 things your psychiatrist wants you to know] There are a lot of misconceptions about psychiatrists and the way we practice, mainly because our sphere of medicine is so vastly different from that of any other medical specialty (and yes, I have an MD!) Here are a few thoughts I hope will help you understand us and our field a little better. 1. […] [Stop the competition in medical school] Medical school attracts very similar kind of people. Most of us are high-achieving, intelligent people with the common goal of helping others. It is beautiful to think of all of the potential patients we could serve working together. Applying to medical school and medical education often suppresses that potential. Somewhere in between all of the […] [How one patient’s end-of-life care can affect us all] David was 42 when he died from stomach cancer. He spent the last year of his life receiving useless chemotherapy and debilitating radiation. David was in terrible pain all of the time. He stayed in bed for months as cancer destroyed his ribs, back and lungs. Finally, David was rushed to a hospital, plugged into […] [Donald Trump triggers deep-seated human instincts] My dad is a locally famed and sincere career politician. All my life I have seen him value public service over personal wealth. As a young lawyer, he worked in Washington DC for the Department of Justice during the civil rights movement, and he often shares stories of his tour of duty in 1960’s Alabama. […] [Bullying isn’t just for kids. Do you do it?] I well remember being bullied on the school bus. On many cold, wet mornings (a large portion of the year in West Virginia, by the way), I found my junior-high self sitting in front of high school juniors and seniors who turned their class rings upside down, then used them to hit lesser life forms […] [How a hurricane brought a hospital team closer together] It turns out that South Carolina is having a busy hurricane season. Recently, Charleston County was under a mandatory evacuation in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew. All I-26 lanes were converted into westbound traffic, gas stations were running low on fuel, and the local Wal-Mart was out of bottled water. It was T-minus 3 days to […] [A cardiac electrophysiologist shares his inspiring journey] Kevin Thomas is a cardiac electrophysiologist at Duke University Hospital. Watch his journey. Courtesy of Black Men In White Coats and Diverse Medicine. Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. [The kind of person who makes this country great] It is hard, perhaps impossible, to take the measure of a man in thirty minutes. However, there is still much that can be learned. After enjoying an evening meal in Tampa with friends to celebrate my birthday, my wife and I summoned a Lyft to get home. The ride would be about a half an […] [Growing up in a medical family: The good and the bad] Modern families are an ever-changing nucleus of the pursuit of happiness, well-being, success and security. Medical families are no exception to that; in fact, I believe they are deeply centered on such values and aspirations. While some might believe that growing up in a medical family is a blessing, others may tell you it’s a […] [When physicians can’t hide the emotion] You have to create a disconnect from death. Not indifference, in fact, it’s your duty to combat it. But as an emergency medicine physician, you lose that battle often. I encounter death on a near daily basis as a resident in the emergency department, and despite all my years of training, there’s often nothing I […] [Did Obama break the law to save the Affordable Care Act?] Recently, a federal audit found that the Obama administration has illegally redirected funds related to collections from the Affordable Care Act that, by law, should have been deposited in the U.S. Treasury. President Obama, under the guise of executive order, used these tax dollars to bail out insurance companies that have experienced hundreds of millions […] [Dr. Google isn’t all bad: Patient engagement might help outcomes] A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. It made the rounds on social media this winter: a photo of a coffee mug with the words “Please Do Not Confuse Your Google Search With My Medical Degree.” Colleagues shared and retweeted it, feeling a sense of vindication. I have to admit […] [How can hope help make cancer a chronic disease?] Perhaps, doctors struggle more than most with memories that mark sad moments in their careers. For me, one of the most indelible was of a wonderful young man with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). When I started my oncology career in the early 1970s, CML was almost always fatal. It would start with a chronic phase, […] [Why this doctor shares his patients’ stories] Around 10 a.m., I had just finished seeing a patient in office when my pager went off: “Yellow Trauma — 3 y.o. male: Alleged fall down 7 cement steps, suspected abuse.” Our team dropped everything and descended upon the emergency department in our hospital. By the time we had reached the patient, a dozen ER […] [Selfie-obsessed millennials can teach doctors a thing or two] Self-entitled, self-absorbed and selfie-obsessed. These are just a few adjectives critics use to describe the millennial generation of today’s 16-to-36-year-olds, born between 1980 and 2000. Born in the early 80s, I both understand the criticism levied against my generation and simultaneously empathize with many of my peers who were raised in the digital revolution and, […] [This doctor stopped telling patients to lose weight. Here’s why.] Several years ago, I was meeting a young woman in my clinic for the first time. She was healthy but had been obese most of her adult life, even though she had tried many methods of losing weight. We spoke for a few minutes about diet and exercise, and she agreed to see the nutritionist. […] [MKSAP: 25-year-old woman with diarrhea for 2 days] Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 25-year-old woman e-mails her internist from Mexico with a report of diarrhea for 2 days. She is traveling and reports three to four loose bowel movements per day. She has been dining in the hotel restaurants but has also consumed […] [Defiance will inspire progress: Physicians should not surrender at any cost] Independent physicians are at the beginning of a challenging movement as we fight to stay relevant and solvent during the transition of health care from independence to “regulation without representation.” In 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act with the objective to help the struggling British East India Company survive. Opposition to the Act resulted […] [The precarious peril of pay-for-performance] As a primary care pediatrician, I am often on the front line of mental health care. Since child psychiatric referral services are sparse and overloaded, I often have to initiate counseling for anxiety in many of my patients. One thing that I have learned is that you can help someone with anxiety in a tremendous […] [A medical student realizes how he could change the system] This has not been an uncommon occurrence over the past 2 1/2 years. In my bed with my laptop when I should be asleep, looking at blogs, taking quizzes, checking out stats on different specialties to find my place in this crazy world we call medicine. This wouldn’t occur all the time but enough that […] [The night this physician was profiled. And he was OK with it.] One very late spring evening during my last year of residency, I was driving home and got stopped at a police DUI checkpoint. I was exhausted from being up all night from being on call the night before and having been very busy had no time to shower, shave or change into my street clothes. I also got […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Follow on Facebook] | [Twitter] --------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the KevinMD e-newsletter. If a friend sent you this email and you want to subscribe, go to [KevinMD]. --------------------------------------------------------------- 173 Daniel Webster Highway Nashua, New Hampshire 03062 [Unsubscribe] | [Change Subscriber Options]