Why is everyone talking about the VA APRN proposed rule?
There been a lot of heated and sometimes unprofessional discourse about the VA Advanced Practice Registered Nurses proposed rule (open for comments until July 25th) but not many folks have actually read the full rule language. In my opinion, it contains nothing to...
Medical error is #3 cause of death – what does this mean?
Recently, a paper written by researchers at Johns Hopkins asserted that medical error was the third leading cause of the death in the United States. This received – as you might imagine – considerable coverage in the media. The researchers...
Who is mentoring academic physicians?
This week, I had the honor and delight to be a Visiting Professor at Cornell. Specifically, I met with members of the Department of Anesthesiology of Weill Cornell Medical College at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (although the...
Collaboration in Patient Safety: SPA and AAP lead by example
While I'm sure that all physicians and other healthcare professionals want to collaborate in order to achieve the highest quality of medical care and enhanced patient safety, the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia and American Academy of Pediatrics are really leading by...
Can we nudge for safer healthcare?
A nudge is a form of social engineering to make better choices. In the world of patient safety and medical decisions, it shares some of the concepts of human factors engineering. Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein may be the world’s authority on the Nudge concept, and...
Happy Friday! Play is the new work.
“It’s Friday!” “Happy Friday!” “Fri-YAY!” If you are a healthcare professional, chances are good that this gets under your skin. Weekends? They don’t exist in your world. And if you have a weekend, rejoice - you can finally catch up on... more work? Isn’t play for...
What Dr. Laura knows about why doctors should be active online
Like many of you, I have a fairly long commute. Recently, as I was driving and scanning the channels on Sirius, I landed on a talk program hosted by Dr. Laura Schlessinger – a certified marriage and family counselor (her PhD is in physiology) with many decades of...
Why do we think the grass is always greener? Neuroscience.
Why do we think the grass is always greener in some other pasture? This powerful and ubiquitous experience is rooted in a human nature tendency called the focusing illusion. The focusing illusion describes how humans make judgments. Generally, we focus on a subset of...
The Powerball Jackpot is $1.4 Billion – Is it Irrational to Play?
Someone has to win the 1.4 billion dollar Powerball jackpot, right? Did you buy a Powerball Lottery ticket? With a jackpot of 1.4 billion dollars for tomorrow’s Powerball Lottery drawing, record numbers of people are frenetically purchasing record numbers of...
On Perceived Value, Patient Satisfaction, and Commission Bias
Recently, I read an article about a new mother’s experience taking her toddler to the emergency room after a face-first fall onto an iron table, bleeding profusely. After her child was evaluated, it was determined that no serious injury was sustained, and no further...
Why Doctors Should Be On Social Media: The Best Defense is a Good Offense
It is said that the best defense is a good offense. This is certainly true when it comes to online reputation and digital presence. Doctors should be using social media and other online platforms strategically. Healthcare institutions without a medical...
What if Doctors and Nurses Could Support Each Other?
This week, KevinMD will be publishing a post I wrote about inter-professional hostility in healthcare. I thought I would share some of the inspiration for that post here. Is there really an escalation of 'scope of practice' conflicts and a downward spiral of...
You Should Ditch Emotional Authenticity
With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, I’m seeing a lot of “feel good” posts around the internet. The one I found most interesting was (no surprise, if you know me) based on the psychology and neuroscience of thankfulness and gratitude. The gist: ditch your...
21 Ways Physicians Can Use Social Media
Yesterday, I gave a quick digital strategy update to my group, and inadvertently sabotaged* the rest of my academic day fielding questions from colleagues: “Why should we bother with social media? What’s the easiest way to do the bare minimum? What platform should I...
Social Media Training for Doctors and Healthcare Leaders
Comprehensive and efficient physician-centric digital strategy for serious professionals. There are many critical reasons that modern physicians simply must be online. You’re probably way behind. We can fix that. As a physician leader, you may want to: recruit better...
“Bad Things Happen in Medicine – Deal With It”
Those are the words of a physician, responding to a survey about whether and how doctors are affected by death or other bad outcomes for their patients. Here's another point of view (you'll want to allow images to download if you're reading this via email): Below is...
Stanford MedicineX Live Tweeting – Good or Bad?
According to symplur.com, Stanford's Medicine X conference #MedX had an incredible reach of nearly 219 million impressions and over 56,000 tweets in the past ten days. But, controversy remains about whether it is OK to tweet a speaker's slides without proper...
If You’re Reading This, You’ve Survived the “Killing Season”
It’s that time of year again – healthcare centers across the country experience a massive cohort turnover as newly graduated medical students become resident physicians, and new responsibilities and autonomy are given to existing trainees. It has long been...