I’ve been treating opioid addiction with buprenorphine (Suboxone, Zubsolv, Bunavail) since 2005. Here’s a conference presentation that covers some perennial questions that I receive from primary care providers. I’m happy to bring the slide deck to you for a live training.
I recently stumbled upon The Medicine of Place in a coffee shop in St. Cloud, Minn. The authors, Jerry Hansen and Chuck Norwood, are local guys. In fact, Chuck works a few doors down at the Paramount Center for the Arts, where I connected with him a few days later. (I see patients at the Stearns County Jail, which is right around the corner.)
The book contains perennial wisdom and beautiful photographs, and is a reminder that there are still mystics among us. Consider the following page (click to enlarge):
The title is published by North Star Press, also in St. Cloud.
Many thanks to Curtis Weinrich, with North Star Press, and Chuck Norwood for permission to post the page above.
I’ve been teaching evidence-based medicine at the University of Minnesota since 2004. I have a particular interest in evidence-based physical diagnosis; that is, the relative value of history and physical exam data for establishing and excluding disease. This is the realm of pretest probability, likelihood ratios and Bayes’ Theorem.
I reviewed the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) in my December 2017 column in Today’s Hospitalist (where I contribute a numbers-oriented piece every other months). NEWS is a deceptively simple mash-up of vital signs that accurately predicts 24-hour mortality. Low scores—which is where my interest lies—have exceedingly high negative predictive value (translation: very few people with low scores die).
Nerdy footnote: Please check out JAMA’s Rational Clinical Examination and Stephen McGee’s Evidence-Based Physical Diagnosis for more numbers for doctors.
You’ll be running into me throughout the Minneapolis skyways the next several months. Here’s a panel that just went up at Radisson Blu.
Many thanks to Deb Anderson and Christine Foerster at Outfront Media. And, of course, to my wife, Joan, for the art direction and production. She’s also responsible for our print ads in Minnesota Monthly and my website.
I’m pleased to be presenting at the HealthEast Spine Symposium on November 30th. My topic is resilience, which is the flip-side of burnout.
Although I don’t plan to spend a lot of time on it, healthcare leaders should consider Slides 41 and 42, the underlying study and my commentary in Today’s Hospitalist. In short, bad bosses contribute to burnout.
The relationship between personality structure and burnout and is also worth a look (Slides 43–46 and the related study).
You can find my PowerPoint here or by clicking on the image below.
I’m pleased to be presenting at the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians’ first-ever Narrative Medicine Workshop. The event will occur on Tuesday, November 28th, at 6 p.m. Registration is free and food will be provided!
You can find my PowerPoint here or by clicking on the image below.
Life isn’t easy—especially in healthcare. Burnout is a huge problem that has rightfully received a lot of attention. But what’s the solution?
Resilience is an antidote to burnout. It’s the approach the U.S. military takes when deploying troops to stressful, unpredictable and often dangerous circumstances.
Today, I’ll be discussing resilience at the Upper Midwest Oncology Education Network’s annual meeting. In a novel twist, we assessed attendees’s resilience in the weeks preceding the conference and will be challenging them to improve their resilience in the months that follow.
You can find my associated PowerPoint here.
Late-breaking news: Burnout in oncology pharmacists has been studied. Pharmacists had the highest rate of burnout—53%—in a large cohort that also included physicians, advanced practice providers and nurses.
Halloween means costumes, candy and the MARRCH Annual Conference!
This year, I’m presenting on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) for addiction. You can find my PowerPoint here. REBT connects well with SMART Recovery, the mutual help method/community.
Please also see the REBT Self-Help Form, which was a critical piece in my presentation.
I’m a long-time contributing editor to Today’s Hospitalist. My “beat” involves numbers—dollars, RVUs, burnout—basically anything that can be measured.
I considered a simple bedside calculator that predicts opioid overdose in my October 2017 commentary. Overdose risk is generally much higher than providers think because of ubiquitous risk factors like concomitant antidepressant use.
Readers who want to go deeper can find primary literature here, here and here.
Minnesota Monthly recently named me a “Top Doctor” in the specialty of Addiction Medicine. The list appeared in the October print issue and online. I’ve been recognized annually since 2014.
