There’s lots of talk about physician burnout. There’s even more talk about how we get rid of it. Everyone has a solution. But the problem with the conversation is that burnout is a sign, not a disease. Burnout is the downstream result of a number of complex upstream problems. But it's rarely the problem. Focusing on fixing burnout is like trying to eliminate fever ... Continue Reading about Burnout is a sign
What is a Doctor’s Role?
This sounds like a crazy question. But it really isn’t. What does a doctor do? What's my job with my patients. What is a doctor's role? Some of what I do is transactional. Simple stuff with clear end-points. Some of it involves critical conversations and deeper kinds of thinking, planning, and translating. Breaking my job down into different roles I got to ... Continue Reading about What is a Doctor’s Role?
Long-Form Twitter and the Physician Conversation
If you pay attention to medical Twitter you’ll notice the creeping emergence long threads and clustered Tweets over the past few months. It’s long-form Twitter. This was evident during the discussion around the release of the CABANA trial - the study drew a strong response from cardiologists on Twitter who, despite the finding, were divided on the role of ablation in ... Continue Reading about Long-Form Twitter and the Physician Conversation
Three A’s of Physician Success: Availability, Affability, Ability
The three A’s of physician success are availability, affability and ability. In this order. It speaks to what patients see as the most important attribute of a physician. Capacity and competence take a back seat to who happens to be around when you’re in need. To some it sounds short-sighted. But it works because average physician know how serves the average ... Continue Reading about Three A’s of Physician Success: Availability, Affability, Ability
The Fixer and the Docent
I went to medical school with a woman who wanted to fix things. As a fourth year medical student on clinical rotations when confronted with chronic conditions she would bang her fists. ‘Just fix it,’ she would say with frustrated urgency. ‘I want something I can fix.’ She wanted the quick hit of making things better. So she became a surgeon under the illusion that she ... Continue Reading about The Fixer and the Docent
Too Many Chief Medical Innovators?
Jack West is on to something here on Medscape. He discovered that meetings like the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference are flush with Chief Medical Innovators and doctors disconnected from the day-to-day operations of caring for patients. In all of these meetings that purport to disrupt healthcare, where I met hundreds of participants, not a single one sees patients ... Continue Reading about Too Many Chief Medical Innovators?