Promise to Practice
If we do not know the past of American health care, we have no direction for the future. Age and education level does not matter – all that is required is a curiosity for the internal workings of the American health care system. Please navigate to the "The Doctor Dialogue" tab.
Debt: The Leaky Bucket
The Doctor Dialogue 4.11.25 Happy Friday! Debt: The Leaky Bucket With on-time consistent payments, when does the average American doctor fully pay their student loans back? Age 50. 5-0. Half a century. Let’s do some back of the envelope calculations. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), the average student starting medical school is 24 years old and graduates at 28. According to an analysis by the Education Data Initiative, the average debt for medical students in 2023 is...
Live The Question
The Doctor Dialogue 4.4.25 Happy Friday! Live The Question Love the questions themselves, because the answer you find today might be irrelevant tomorrow. The previous two weeks we have examined work life balance through vignettes of my mother and the eyes of Mark Scout investigating the questions of: 1) Is work/life balance something to be sought? 2) How does one not get swept away by the tidal wave of overcommitment compounded by emotional and physical strain in the medical field? and 3)...
Morphine and Memory
The Doctor Dialogue 3.28.25 Happy Friday! This is the second installation of a series on work/life balance in medicine. Morphine and Memory “I feel like I am only alive for 8 hours a day,” says Mark Scout to his sister, Devon, in the new hit series Severance when trying to explain the strange experience of being severed from his personal life. Since its first episode was released in February 2022, Severance has provided an incisive critique of identity, memory, corporate control, and a...
All Gas, No Brakes
The Doctor Dialogue 3.21.25 Happy Friday! This is the first installation of a series on work/life balance in medicine. All Gas, No Brakes A coughing fit from the dining room breaks through the video wired to my ears. I look up. My mom, like a blacksmith at her anvil, is pounding away at her keyboard reviewing her charts for the patients she saw today and previewing those for tomorrow. She turns away from her computer as her body is racked by a cough brought on by the flu. She then turns back...
Teamwork in Medicine
The Doctor Dialogue 3.14.25 Happy Friday! This week I am experimenting with opening up a discussion group on LinkedIn so people can see other subscribers' thoughts on my article (see button at bottom of newsletter). Please let me know if there are any technical difficulties. Without further ado, here is... Teamwork in Medicine Graduating with an MD or a DO is a license to kill, yet medicine is one of the only current professions that is centered around an oath–the Hippocratic Oath–whose...
Dollar is King
The Doctor Dialogue 3.7.25 Happy Friday! On a different note from last week, here is an article I was attempting to publish in a medical journal but found out you need a terminal degree (MD, MPH, JD) to publish in a medical journal which I do not have. It is a bit more technical but I hope even if you have no background in health care you can still understand the majority of what I am discussing. Perspectives from a VP of a health insurance company, an emergency medicine physician, a Veterans...
What attracts young adults to medicine?
The Doctor Dialogue 2.21.2025 Why are young adults going into medicine? As the United States emerges from COVID-19 with a depleted health care workforce paired with a climate of uncertainty and rapid change, there is an ever-important question: how can we encourage young people to go into medicine? After discussions with a dozen pre-med and current medical students, I believe the answer is two-fold: personal experiences fueling passion and professional experiences opening the door for dreams...