March 5th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Humor
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“I started phlegming up a couple of days ago and my tonsils are huge and banging against the side walls.”
Ladies and gentlemen, doctors, patients, scientists, artists and assorted visitors, I don’t pretend to understand humanity, or the human condition. I don’t know all there is to know about medicine. But I do know a great piece of prose when I see it. And this, dear friends, rises to poetry.
Phlegmingly yours,
Edwin
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
February 21st, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Paging Dr. Mortis, Dr. Rigor Mortis!
This is a sample section from a new book I’m writing on the transition from residency to practice.
When you die:
A) The house of medicine will collapse, and only recover by remembering your compassion and sacrifice.
B) Patients and staff will wail in sack-cloth and ashes
C) Someone may name a procedure or drug in your honor
D) People will walk over your dead body, take your vacant day-shifts and go through your pockets for change.
The answer is D. Although I’m using some hyperbole, the point is that when you die, some people will be sad; your loved ones will miss you. But life will go on. The hospital will not close, and the sick will not stop being sick. So conduct your life with this in mind. Medicine, for all it’s wonder and value, must not be a rock on which you wreck yourself. Let it enhance, not overwhelm, your life. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
February 15th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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As we wrestle with political factions and mull over assorted ideas for reforming health-care in America, one simple solution bears discussion. Of course, we notoriously hate simple solutions. The modern American solution to simple solutions is to develop layers of complexity and inefficiency. I can only assume that in government, as in hospital administrations, this has to do with creating jobs. To the extent that it keeps nefarious, clever individuals off the street and occupies them in what passes for gainful employment, I applaud the effort. But it seldom solves problems, and typically creates them.
Nevertheless, I digress. My painfully simple solution is this. Allow every health-care provider to deduct, from their federal income tax, the care they provide for free to uninsured patients. It can be the Medicare value of the care; possibly even the Medicaid value. But in the end, a financially savvy doctor, dentist, therapist or any other health professional will end up paying no income tax. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
February 10th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
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I’m becoming an amateur archeologist. The hilltop where we live is strewn with arrowheads and bits of Native American pottery shards. I have slowly, surely, trained my eye to find them. There is little flint here; so most of the pieces I find were made of quartz. (Hard to work with, but remarkably beautiful and almost always a brilliant white.)
My kids and I walk the red-clay paths and look down for bits of stone protruding up, especially after a good, soaking rain. Elijah, my youngest boy, was the first to find one. ‘Is that an arrowhead, Papa?’ ‘Yep, good eye son!’ He had found what was probably the point of an atlatl (a kind of mix between arrow and spear).
We look for rocks that seem shaped by human hands. That’s the ticket; look for something that seems to suggest a purpose or a history. Things with no shape, no marks from being worked, are probably not worth our time. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
February 3rd, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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I am very blessed. The hospital where I practice, while concerned with patient satisfaction, does not worship at its altar. That is, so far our administrators seem to understand that people will occasionally be angry or unsatisfied, and that such dissatisfaction is within the realm of real life. We still have people storm out of the emergency department, prattling on about lawyers and lawsuits, promising to go to another hospital in the future (which we heartily encourage). On the whole, we do a bang-up job of keeping the right people happy, and an adequate job of making the right people unhappy. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
