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Doctor Suing For Bad Ratings Online

Dr. Kimberly HenryI must say I think Dr. Kimberly Henry, cosmetic surgeon, has made a big professional mistake. She has filed a lawsuit to stop online reviewers from badmouthing her on the Internet. She is seeking injunctions against at least 12 reviewers from sites such as Yelp.com and DoctorScorecard.com. Dr. Henry claims libel and defamation, invasion of privacy and interference with prospective economic advantage and is seeking $1million in general damages and $1million in special damages, etc.

Now I don’t know Dr. Henry nor do I know of her plastic surgery technique. I don’t know who the disgruntled patients are or if they are unfairly targeting her. What I do know is that the Internet is here to stay and there’s no place to hide if you don’t provide excellent customer service. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

A Team Approach To Primary Care: Why Some Doctors May Resist

What if some physicians actually like the way primary care is currently practiced? It’s hard to believe, considering the majority of studies suggest marked dissatisfaction among primary care doctors, and an increasing prevalence of physician burnout.

The ACP’s Bob Doherty recently summarized an epic Health Affairs article devoted to fixing primary care. The bottom line was that paying primary care doctors better isn’t enough. The whole field needs to be re-invented. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Despite Uncertainty, Why Doctors Should Hang In There

There is discontent in the house of medicine. So many physicians struggle. They seem to wade through uncertainty every day — uncertain about diagnoses, about pain, about disposition. We find ourselves uncertain about our jobs, our futures, our finances.

The consultants we call are uncertain about their practices and whether they can remain viable in the coming years as medicine evolves into something we may find unrecognizable.

Some days, as I enter my 17th year of practice, I don’t know if I can bear to walk around our little department for 10 or 20 more years, like some gerbil on an exercise wheel. I am uncertain if I can bear the weight of more entitlements, more confabulated stories, more regulations, and manufactured drama. I wonder if I can endure decades more of circadian assaults on my brain. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*

How The System Affects Our Doctors: A Must-See Documentary

Yesterday a much-anticipated package arrived in the mail containing a documentary film directed (and acted) by a young emergency room physician, Ryan Flesher, M.D., and produced by a former clinical social worker, Nancy Pando, L.I.C.S.W. The film is called “The Vanishing Oath.”

As background, the film is a 3-year project born in 2007 just before the great U.S. healthcare reform debate began. Over 200 hours of interviews were conducted to explore a simple question:

Why Dr. Flesher had grown to hate medicine. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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