Everybody hates curbside consults – the informal, “Hey, Joe, how would you treat asymptomatic pyuria in my 80-year-old nursing home patient?”-type questions that dominate those Doctor’s Lounge conversations that aren’t about sports, Wall Street, or ObamaCare. Consultants hate being asked clinical questions out of context; they know that they may give incorrect advice if the [...]
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Don’t Pawn Off the Work: Bob’s Method for Tackling Big, Hairy Projects
In my last post, I promised – just in time for the New Year – to describe my fail-safe method for tackling overwhelmingly large projects. Please, please don’t waste this method on cleaning out a closet or writing an abstract. That would be like using a flamethrower to light a holiday candle. Rather, consider it [...]
(Not) Saving the Best for Last: Managing One’s Time on Rounds and Sign-Out
A clever little study was published last month in the Archives of Internal Medicine, and it – plus the fact that I’ve just started a stint as ward attending – prompted me to think about the importance of managing a set of tasks in the hospital. In my quarter-century of mentoring residents and faculty, I [...]
Denying Reality About Bad Prognoses: Not a Benign Problem
The human capacity to deny reality is one of our defining characteristics. Evolutionarily, it has often served us well, inspiring us to press onward against long odds. Without denial, the American settlers might have aborted their westward trek somewhere around Pittsburgh; Steve Jobs might thrown up his hands after the demise of the Lisa; and [...]
On Becoming Chair of the ABIM: Why the Board Matters More Than Ever
On September 10, 1986, soon after I completed my residency in internal medicine, I “took the Boards” – the certifying examination administered by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). A few months later, I learned that I passed the exam, and that success, combined with an attestation by my residency program director, rendered me [...]
Cutting Healthcare Costs: Searching – Ever So Gingerly – For the Right Words
During my med school psychiatry rotation, I was taught not to shy away from discussing suicide with a depressed patient. “You won’t be suggesting something they haven’t thought about,” my professor told me back in 1982. “By not raising it, you add to the sense of stigma and it just becomes the elephant in the [...]
Hospitalists and Squeezed Balloons
I began thinking about – and yes, advocating for – the concept of hospitalists in the mid-1990s, when I became convinced that having separate inpatient and outpatient physicians would improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare. A study in today’s Annals of Internal Medicine reports that, while hospitalists did cut hospital lengths of stay [...]
Do We Have Any Clue How To Cut The Cost Of Healthcare?
At the Society of Hospital Medicine’s annual meeting last week in Dallas, Lenny Feldman of Johns Hopkins presented the results of a neat little study. His hypothesis: physicians given information about the costs of their laboratory tests would order fewer of them. Feldman randomized 62 tests either to be displayed per usual on the computerized [...]
Can Berwick Be Saved? Here’s One Possible Scenario
We’ve all had the experience of hearing someone we know well say or write something totally out of character, and wondering, “what was that about?” Don Berwick said such a thing last week, all-but-contradicting President Obama’s support for a strengthened, independent Medicare payment board. After a little head scratching, I began to wonder whether this [...]
Nurse Staffing, Patient Mortality, And A “Lady” Named Louise
How many nurses does it take to care for a hospitalized patient? No, that’s not a bad version of a light bulb joke; it’s a serious question, with thousands of lives and billions of dollars resting on the answer. Several studies (such as here and here) published over the last decade have shown that having [...]
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