A physician’s personal great resignation

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[Register for free]( and turn insight into advantage. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Apr 18, 2022 [A physician’s personal great resignation]( It’s been a year since I retired from almost 40 years as a pediatrician (most of that time as a pediatric hospitalist). What have I learned? What surprised me? 1. I have finally caught up on my sleep. I have been convinced that I still had a cumulative sleep deficit dating back to med school. [...] [Writing is an outlet for this physician [PODCAST]]( “There is something about physically putting pen to paper, that connection between your mind and your body that is just very health-inducing. And it takes time. And often we do not dedicate the time to taking care of ourselves and something as simple as writing in a journal, writing these, you know, these pieces. In [...] [A surprising way to create safer, more efficient patient care]( For practicing physicians, inclusivity proves critical. Not because of HR mandates. Not because it’s a good thing to do. Inclusivity improves your patients’ care. It enables you to be a better doctor. Rising complexity, rapid change, and treating far-flung patients mean physicians need information from all angles of care. Physicians need to know that everyone [...] [COVID-19 and the Great Resignation: a catalyst, not the cause]( The Great Resignation. I doubt there is a medical practice out there that has not been affected by it. And experts predict we are just at the beginning. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ early data from 2022 shows that health care is among the top three industries increasing in monthly “quit rate,” second only [...] [The relationship between communication and burnout]( Recently, colleagues asked me how I solve burnout with communication. From the tone of their voice, they thought I was in over my head, and this was never going to work. I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity for me to share. I came into the field of burnout through bullying. I’ve been the [...] [Remove race from clinical guidelines [PODCAST]]( “We need to address the underlying preventable factors that cause more Black Americans to die of heart attacks and strokes and suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes complications than white Americans instead of focusing on non-existent biological differences. I would like to see the scientific disciplines unite to call out the mislabeling of race [...] [In defense of medical errors]( I gasped at the guilty verdict that halted my indifferent scroll through the newsfeed. In the course of her duties, a nurse who had accidentally administered the wrong drug, self-reported her mistake and remorsefully admitted her error to a body of her peers was turned into a criminal. If that standard was applied across the [...] [It’s time to focus on non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia]( Pneumonia is the deadliest of all hospital-acquired infections in the United States, costs 3 billion dollars per year and is the leading cause of new antibiotic initiation in hospitals. Hospital-acquired pneumonia is classified as either ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) or non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NVHAP). For the past 15 years, VAP has dominated our attention, resulting in [...] [Acknowledging and mitigating unconscious bias in health care [PODCAST]]( “Unconscious bias in health care describes associations or attitudes that reflexively alter our perceptions, thereby unintentionally affecting behavior, interactions, and decision-making. Health care organizations need to be actively discussing this subject at the highest level to find gaps and learn where to dedicate resources for improvement, even if it means confronting awkward topics and having [...] [We’re losing the war. No, not that one.]( In the coming months, no one can predict with certainty what will happen with the war in Ukraine. But there’s one thing we do know for sure. The United States will soon reach an unthinkable milestone: One million Americans will have died of COVID-19. Over the last month, while many people were celebrating the rollback [...] [A tale of 2 nurses]( There is no denying that we live and work in some extraordinarily trying times. Cast your eyes in the direction of any streaming news source, and another breaking story that describes the catastrophic dumpster fire of the current state of the U.S. health care industry will jump out at you. The weight of this downward [...] [We are the voice of reason, the scientific experts, and the advocates for our patients]( These last two years have been extremely challenging for most health care professionals. Watching society challenge essential health and science principles that we have known to be fact has been difficult to bear. Being villainized, health care workers went from being hailed “health care heroes” to being the target of hate, violence, and disregard. These [...] [Hidden wonders of human anatomy [PODCAST]]( “It turns out that living beings are less like bags of sloshing water, as I imagined in grade school, and more like a stew. While water makes up most of it, water alone is thin and empty of the organic molecules from which organisms are built—the stew thickeners. Water alone is lifeless. Instead, it is [...] [New legislation addresses health care professionals’ mental health needs]( The U.S. government took an important step forward to help address the high incidence of health care professionals’ burnout, depression, and suicides. On March 18, 2022, President Biden signed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act into law. The law outlines several requirements for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Key [...] [It’s not your heart that’s failing. It’s our medical jargon.]( A little over two years ago, my elderly mother was admitted to the hospital. Almost 90, she’d been short of breath for days — uncomfortable, perspiring, unable to sleep properly. Blood tests, a chest X-ray, and an echocardiogram followed, whereupon her doctor pronounced: “You have congestive heart failure, Mrs. Les.” I arrived on the scene [...] [How to stop sabotaging yourself]( Doctors have already proven their worth. We have succeeded beyond what most of the population will achieve. And yet, there are certain goals we cannot seem to achieve. And the worst part is that we know we could do it, and the person getting in our way is someone we know well. We look at [...] [When a doctor leaves a practice, who tells the patients? [PODCAST]]( “I am ashamed of the callous, avoidant goodbyes that have been made in my name, and I regret the distress caused by this widely accepted standard. The determined patients will figure it out anyway, and the less-resourceful ones are left confused, hurt, and more likely to avoid important medical care.” Karen Dong is a family physician. [...] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Thousands of physicians are browsing this job board](. 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