Here is our second view from our opposite vantage points. You can read more by Lilian White on her own Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/learningmedicine/p/ms8?r=254ice&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post Why Family Medicine? (By Hans) I knew from age 4 that I wanted to be a doctor. At that point in my life I had been seen at home once or maybe more by a general practitioner who did housecalls. I had also been hospitalized with abdominal pain. I remember riding up in the elevator, teddy bear in hand, to the x-ray department for testing. Starting at age 6, I had yearly eye doctor vi ..read more

It feels like we are moving backwards! (This is going up on my Substack tomorrow. Links to older posts on the same topic below.) In the beginning of the opioid epidemic, pain became the fifth vital sign, and we all know what happened after that. The prescribing guidelines became more restrictive. States and national authorities implemented dose limits. The monitoring of physician prescribing practices and the shaming of physicians who prescribe more opiates than their peers is systematic now. A Country Doctor Writes: is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work ..read more

This is exciting news! Early on after my two books were published, there were some comments asking me to record them as audiobooks. It sounded tempting, but more than a little daunting considering the possible distractions like cars driving by and dogs barking in the yard, so I ended up not doing it. Now, with the help of rapidly evolving AI generated narration, I have simply selected which of several voices I wanted to read my books, then clicked “Add audiobook with virtual voice”. That’s it. KDP (Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing) even promised to have the books ready and available on Audibl ..read more

I thought I moved everything successfully to Substack. But I still get a lot of views here. Please comment below if you are still here , looking for new material and not moving to Substack. Thanks ..read more

I started this blog in April 2008. Over the past 15 years, I have moved three times, twice to the same house in northern Maine, changed jobs a couple of times, and gone through a divorce. I have published almost 1,000 posts here, inspired by my work with patients. I believe I coined the phrase My work inspires my writing and my writing inspires my work. Sometimes, because I was actively trying not to feel burned out, I saw uplifting or thought provoking things in my ordinary patient encounters that I might have missed if I hadn’t resolved not to sink into despair about how things work in medic ..read more

I just realized none of the posts show on an iPad or a computer, but they do show on an iPhone. WordPress is working on this. In the meantime, please visit my Substack ..read more

https://open.substack.com/pub/acdw/p/time-to-think?r=254ice&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post ..read more

https://open.substack.com/pub/acdw/p/time-to-think?r=254ice&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post ..read more

This week I posted two brand new pieces on Substack and brought back several posts from the blog archives. In THE WAY HEALTHCARE IS GOING, WE NEED MORE NURSES, NOT MORE DOCTORS, I make the argument that so much of what doctors have to do today could be done by nurses, and therefore the doctor shortage is just an illusion. Americans don’t understand that public health doesn’t necessarily have to be shouldered by physicians who are trained to diagnose and treat disease. Many other western countries have a robust public health system. In THE HIGH COST OF SPECIFICITY, I audaciously claim that pri ..read more

This week I posted two brand new pieces on Substack and brought back several posts from the blog archives. In THE WAY HEALTHCARE IS GOING, WE NEED MORE NURSES, NOT MORE DOCTORS, I make the argument that so much of what doctors have to do today could be done by nurses, and therefore the doctor shortage is just an illusion. Americans don’t understand that public health doesn’t necessarily have to be shouldered by physicians who are trained to diagnose and treat disease. Many other western countries have a robust public health system. In THE HIGH COST OF SPECIFICITY, I audaciously claim that pri ..read more