Sitemap - 2024 - A Country Doctor Writes:

My New Life

The Year that Was

Who’s a Diehard Allopath? Not Me, Actually

Christmas Reflections at Winter Solstice

I Work for Galileo Medical

Subjective Pain Assessments are Disappearing. As a Medicare Quality Metric, that is

In Manu Medici: The Art of Administering and Prescribing Medications

Addiction Recovery or Recovery Addiction?

“Cure Sometimes, Treat Often, Comfort Always”

Why Do So Many of My Patients Have Low Potassium in the ER?

My Name is Doctor Bottleneck

Another Thanksgiving Reflection

Physician, Heal Thyself!

A Thanksgiving Reflection

Wellness Check at the End of My Workweek: Sicker than I Thought?

Inpatient Workups Would Reduce Patient Anxiety, Save Time, and Maybe Even Save Money

Remembering the Inpatient Workup: All the Tests to the Patient’s Bedside

Deep Knowledge Needed for Expert Diagnosis and Treatment

Reverse White Coat Hypertension in a Patient with Anxiety: Treat the Blood Pressure or Treat the Anxiety?

Doctoring, In Simple Terms

[COPY] The Future of Doctoring is Already Here: Do More, Give Less or Burn Out

Scenes From a Housecall

Personas in the Practice of Medicine

A Failed Transition of Care

Too Many Chest Pains

Curbside Consults by Subscription

A Country Doctor Writes - Again!

A Doctor’s Parting Words

The Gift of One Day

Stewardship: We Worry More About the Environment than Our Own Bodies

My Neurology Professor’s Migraines

Where Does it Hurt?

Inside and Out

An Act to End Constipation

Never Assume – Indeed!

What’s in a Number? Why All These Binary Definitions of Health and Disease?

A Posthumous Blessing

Sickle Cell Disease and Phenylketonuria (PKU): You May Have the Genes, But Your Diet Determines Your Symptoms

The Elfins Return

A Sore Thumb

All Patients Look the Same in Today’s EMRs

The World Has Gone Virtual and So Has Much of Medicine: Stay-at-Home Doctors

The World Has Gone Virtual and So Has Much of Medicine: Specialist Consultations

A Judgment Call

A Terminal Case

A Lesson Learned

Sexual Anatomy & Physiology and Other Medical Terms in Swedish

Only Pain and Fear Bring Patients to the Doctor

Medicine is Not Like Math

Doctors Without Heroes

Anxiety, Worry or Fear? Disappointment, Grief or Depression?

Shouldn’t Suboxone be Over-the-Counter?

PTO: Paid Time Off, Personal Time Off or Partial Time Off?

Progress Notes Shouldn’t Have to Be So Comprehensive

In Most Cases, Normal is Just a Statistic

An Empty Stall

Adverse Effects

Role Play

Today’s Masterpiece

A New Diagnosis or a Re-Diagnosis?

Not on a Silver Platter

Hope is a Contagious Force of Healing

A Negative Stress Test

Endocarditis or Not? A Saturday Triage Decision

Is Gallows Humor Ever Appropriate?

A Bad Case of Congestion

A Change of Heart

A Motherless Child Without a Father

How to Clicker Train Your Doc

HELP ME!

A Deadly Interaction

It Helps to Treat Patients Like Patients

Primary Care is Personal and Passionate

How to Write Like a Dockter

The Apostolic Nature of Our Profession

Why We Need Good Primary Care Physicians

The Man with the Up and Down Blood Pressure

Hippocrates’ First Aphorism

“Thanks for Your Time”: Einstein’s Relativity in the Clinical Encounter

How Much Self-Disclosure is Too Much?

When Patients Disagree and Don’t Believe You

Make the Most of Your Ignorance: Admit, Research, Report Back

A Fire In the Belly

A Day Without a Diagnosis

Early and Late Career Collaboration #3: Doctor in the House?

Doctor in the House? Early and Late Career Collaboration #3

Cultivating Charisma in the Clinical Encounter (and emulating Marcus Welby, M.D.)

There but for the Grace

Fundamentals of Medicine: Diagnosis and Guidance (Not Just Treatment)

As Physicians Today, We Must Both Represent the “System” and Disregard it

The Doctor’s Doctor

More and More Pills for 25-30% Better Odds of This, That and The Other – Some Patients Want That, and Some Will Run the Other Way

Nuts and Bolts Medicine: A Seemingly Trivial Cause of Hypoxia

Quality in Healthcare: Cultural Competence, Diagnostic Accuracy or Patronizing Insensitivity?

Patient Centered or Evidence Based Medicine – Can we really have both?

Quality or Conformity Revisited

A Country Doctor Reads: So Much for this Basic Quality Metric?

Finding Ikigai in the Practice of Medicine

A Country Doctor Reads: Interaction Between Common Atrial Fibrillation Medications

Early and Late Career Collaboration #2: Why Family Medicine?

No Longer Caught Between Two Paradigms

Dear Uncle Marcus (Welby):

Doctors and CEOs Need Time to Think

Doceo, Ergo Sum

The Case For Professional, Not Just Personal, Resilience

Hanging Up the Stethoscope

Black Box Warnings: Time to Reconsider Our Disease=Drug Reflex?

The Minimum Effective Dose

I Wrote My Own Pink Slip

Don’t Ask Me to Work for the Other Side

Opiates, Pain and Integration

Clinical Cross-Coverage Collegiality Conundrums

Today’s Doctors: Colleagues or Free Agents?

Mandatory Pain Assessments Are Such a Pain

Transdiagnostic Treatment Approaches in Primary Care

Early & Late Career Collaboration #1

People Who Don’t Work Have Better Insurance Than People Who Work

CONDITIONS and IN PRACTICE Now Available as Audiobooks

Specialists in Diagnostics

Is Hate Ever Therapeutic?

The Stages of a Man’s Life

I Wish My Clinical Hunches Were Wrong More Often

Treating Friends and Neighbors in Rural Primary Care

New Symptoms With Old Explanations

Revitalizing the U.S. Primary Care Infrastructure | NEJM

The Unreasonable Burden of Specialty Level Diagnostic Specificity in Primary Care

Something Extra

Remember A Country Doctor Talks…

Be the Doctor Each Patient Needs

March Madness at Bedlam Hospital

Ad Usum Proprium: Physician, Treat Thyself!

A Delightful Discovery: My Galileo EMR Works 100% on My iPad Browser

The Irresistible Attraction of a Blank Page

“I Know Your Type”; Doppelgänger and Archetypes in Everyday Medicine

I Forgot About Gaviscon and Suffered Needlessly for Many Years

Angry Docs

Our Inner Elephant

The Fine Art of Medical Messages

Doctoring in the Here and Now

Teflon Doctors and Velcro Patients

An Imaginary Mentor

Practicing Medicine Requires a Patient Relationship

Intuiting Alexithymia

Thou Shalt Not Try to Outsmart Me

The Root Cause of Physician Burnout: Neither Professionals nor Skilled Workers

Frontline Provider Mentoring Opportunity

Myopic Versus Hyperopic Views on Physicians’ Work

Seeing the Big Picture in a Clinical Situation

The Power of Focus

A Country Doctor Reads: Algorithms May Not Work on Diverse Populations in All Cultures - AI Enthusiasts, Take Notice

The Correct Diagnosis – Ten Years Later

Buprenorphine, the Main Ingredient in Suboxone, Is a Great Pain Medication and a Powerful Antidepressant that Often Works Within One Week

All These Gut Feelings: A 10-Year Old With Belly Pain

One More Question

Another Gut Feeling: A Case of Visceral Hyperalgesia?

I Don’t Mean to Pick on Jardiance, But Prescribers Have a Choice: Memorize Published Side Effects or Understand How Drugs Work

My New Housecall Bag

Only in a Housecall

Requiring PT Before Shoulder MRI May Be False Economy

A Gut Feeling: Could This Case Really Be That Simple?

I Learned in Medical School that Serum Uric Acid Levels Over 6 mg/dL Increase the Risk of Gout Flares. JAMA Just Published the Same Thing

Jardiance Almost Lands 60-year Old Man in Jail

Broken Relationships and Sudden Social Isolation are Like Opiate Withdrawal (BOTSA via NYT)

EMRs: It’s the Interface, Stupid*

How Much Time Should Doctors Spend With Their Patients?

DEDIAGNOSING: Fighting Medicalization and Polypharmacy

I Have a Strong Relationship with my Bank but I Almost Never Go There. How Could this Translate to Primary Care?

An Anxious Man With Coronary Plaque

It’s Only Pressure

The Perils of Being First

Maybe PCPs Aren’t Always Necessary

Habits for Health and Happiness

Appendagitis – Not a Typo

Following the Path of the Soul

“I am here, Doctor”

Join my chat

The Elements of Style

Doxepin, a Little Known Super Drug in My Personal Black Bag of Tricks

Please Sign Below: Fraudsters Phishing for Physician Signatures

Five Weight Loss Myths I am Constantly Fighting

Delivering Health Care is Like Practicing a Religion

Rescue Pup Vetoed by Alpha Female

Boots Off

The Future of Doctoring is Already Here: Do More, Give Less or Burn Out (RERUN)

Aren’t We All Somewhere on the Spectrum of Disease?

I Just Diagnosed a Case of SOD, Although I Admit I Wasn’t Quite Familiar With It

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Through Van Buren:

The Dangers of EMR-Defaulted Prescription Stop Dates

If 911 Worked Like a Medical Office Phone System

Sharing Territory

M3DICINE: A Word With 3 Meanings

“Breakout Opportunity” Brings Country Doctor Back into a “State of Permanent Beta”

The Art of Covering

Saying No

Clinical Depth: The Power of Knowing More than the Minimum

Three Dimensional Doctoring

The ABCs of Beginning a Clinical Encounter

Art and Archetypes in Medicine

Cave: The Patient Who Suggests a Diagnosis Before Telling You His Symptoms

Weekly Report 1/13/24

Physicians’ Communication Skills are Overlooked and Undervalued – 2020 Exclusive on The Health Care Blog

Always Looking for Zebras

Anxiety? It’s All in Your Head. Your Sinuses, to Be Exact

Noah’s Journey

Going Places

Orthorexia Nervosa – Too Much of a Good Thing

Useless Medicine

The Thymus is a Largely Forgotten Organ

An Accidental Cure

My First Case of Restless Chest Syndrome?

Flirting With Functional Medicine

Broad Strokes in Clinical Problem Solving: The Simpler, the Better

Never Assume

All Body Parts are Not Created Equal

Playing Poker With the Devil: “Prior Authorizations” are Paralyzing Patients and Burning out Providers

We Shouldn’t Tolerate Sloppy Allergy Lists

How to Talk to Clinicians: Forget Workflows, Just Tell Us How Things Work