Dr. Wes and Kevin, M.D. have both written reviews of the documentary film “The Vanishing Oath.” I started the process rolling of trying to get the film shown locally. No date yet, but looks like it will happen before the year is out.
This is not a new phenomenon in medicine (or any profession). Dr. Robert Goldwyn wrote a nice essay on the some of the issues that can lead to burnout, though not once did he mention burnout specifically. The title says much:
“I Bargained on Working Hard as a Surgeon, Not Working Hard to Be Able to Work Hard as a Surgeon”
The preceding title is a quote from a letter written by a resident in the last year of his training (S. A. Teitlebaum, August 20, 1994). It reflects the gloom besetting the young in particular but certainly not them exclusively. We all are uneasy about our futures, professionally and economically. Bandied in the corridors at a national meeting was a dismal figure: 1:100,000, the presumed proper ratio, as determined by Health Maintenance Organizations, of plastic surgeons to population. That 1 million Americans need only 10 plastic surgeons seems wrong and idiotic to me, but it makes good economic sense to health providers and insurance companies. Their coffers swell as they collect the same or higher premiums while curtailing what they provide.Read more »
As a medical student in his last year, I can attest that my classmates and I would like nothing less than a crystal ball. Always a daunting time in a future physician’s career path, the direction we point ourselves as we launch out of medical school this year seems as arbitrary as ever.
As we examine the rolling seas of medicine and try to determine our individual paths, there seem to be more clouds than blue skies, and certainly more shadows than light. This may or may not be a feeling many prospective physicians feel, but for the class of 2010 it comes as a tough pill to swallow. In a profession at the heart of a national policy debate and with a storied history to examine, it’s extremely disconcerting to be faced with so many question marks. Read more »
Reporting from the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago, empowered patient Andrew Schorr discusses how long it can take before a study is presented at ASCO and the role of clinical trials in giving patients access to the medicines of tomorrow today.
I was having fun watching my niece play with dozens of pool inner tubes when another relative shows up. Never one to surprise me, he shows me a fashion statement I’d never seen before. How do you get your kids to wear their seatbelts?
The key here is repetition. Just like a medical school education, repetition is what makes us experts. Doing the same thing over and over again makes us great at what we do. To get your kids to wear their seatbelt every time, you must make it a part of their daily existence. How do you do that? You buy them a “seatbelt” belts from Honda. Read more »
As a cardiologist and advocate for healthy living through exercise, the bleak news of rising childhood obesity hits me hard. But as an endurance athlete well versed in the inflammatory effects of excessive exercise, and a coach of middle school children, recent news reports on the overtraining of American youth is equally troublesome.
The overtraining of the young American athlete has risen to the level of capturing the attention of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I planned on letting this New York Timespiece pass quietly, as yet another documentation of how adults are either explicitly or implicitly drilling out the young athlete — sacrificing fun at the alter of performance. Little League-like overzealousness is old news dating back to my era, I thought. But I just couldn’t help myself. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
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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…
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…
I was having fun watching my niece play with dozens of 
. 
