While a physician is trained to treat medical conditions and support preventive measures, you know your body or as a parent/caregiver/spouse/partner have relevant experiential knowledge to contribute. Take the time you need to share your knowledge and build a meaningful relationship with providers.
The Doctor Dilemma
October 1, 2026
“Medicine has always been hierarchical, but never has it been so conformist,” writes Dr. Aaron Kheriaty in his latest book, Making the Cut: How to Heal Modern Medicine. He is the Director, Bioethics, Technology, and Human Flourishing Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center. “There are too many thoughtless physicians marching in lockstep to his metrics dictated by vested outside intere...
morePeople’s Hospital
January 4, 2025
Setting aside specialized institutions like children, veteran, and mental health facilities, there are over 6,000 hospitals in the U.S. Let’s start with the nonprofits. This type of hospital qualifies as a charity according to the IRS and is not required to pay property, state, federal, income, or sales tax. In exchange for this significant benefit, nonprofit hospitals are required to re...
moreMedice cura te ipsum
January 15, 2024
“Physician, heal thyself” is a proverb that has been used in literary texts from at least the 6th century B.C. The moral of the proverb is that physicians should care for themselves in order to better care for the illnesses of others. Unfortunately for all of us, more and more doctors and nurses are doing just that - but by leaving the profession. And worse according to Wendell Potter of Healt...
moreDown the Rabbit Hole
October 1, 2023
It’s Not Just for Rabbits A friend sent me an email several months ago suggesting her healthcare experience as a topic for a blog post. She was excited to find a Primary Care Clinic in her city that sounded perfect. They advertised, among many things, time to get to know you as a patient and a multi-team approach. She liked her doctor who looked at her mild osteopenia recorded in a DXA* scan, p...
moreDoctor, Doctor
May 1, 2023
According to a recent study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation of women ages 18-35, doctor visits aren’t always positive. More than 46% of women said that their health care provider did some of these things: dismissed their concerns, assumed something about them without asking, and blamed them for their health problems. Moving up the ages, menopause “received little attention in clinic...
moreA Life-Changing Book
February 15, 2023
The first question you might ask is - Can a book really change your life? If you asked someone who has read and followed AA’s “Big Book” (written in 1939, printed in over 70 languages, and still considered AA’s basic text), they would say yes. That’s how I feel about The Myth of Normal. The book is 500 pages of intense, illuminating, crucial topics that make it, at times, a challenge to ...
more“Question Authority” Returns
April 17, 2025
In the 1960s, Timothy Leary, a well-known figure of the counterculture, popularized many catchphrases like the one above. It’s message was meant to raise doubts about the Vietnam War among other issues. In 2024, according to Marty Markary, M.D. we need to once again reexamine our assumptions about some medical beliefs. In his most recent book, Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wr...
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