I’ve often written about the low salary of infectious disease (ID) physicians as compared to other medical specialities. Much of this is due to ours being a cognitive field where we think more than we do and to the payment incentive plan being designed to reward volume and procedures more so than medical decision thinking. […]
The Pay Gap for Women in Medicine
The now-infamous comment about the pay gap for women in medicine in the Dallas Medical Journal unfortunately represents a belief not as rare as one would hope. It is the belief that the gender pay gap in medicine is deserved. While I do agree that if one works fewer hours one should expect to be […]
What Can Infectious Disease Physicians Learn from Hospitalists?
I just returned from IDWeek in New Orleans where one of the running themes was on the future of the infectious disease specialty. In brainstorming what we could do differently one question revolved around what could infectious disease physicians learn from hospitalists who have become an attractive specialty in just two decades. The New England […]
Surgical Complications including Infection from a Patient’s Viewpoint
Recently, I read a tale in the Washington Post titled “The surgeon said he could fix the injured arm. He had an odd definition of ‘fix’” in which the author described his harrowing 8 year surgical complications odyssey to repair a left distal radial fracture and elbow dislocation acquired when he fell off a ladder […]
C-section Before the Holidays
I work in a hospital that does not have a huge maternity ward. When a baby is born, a short lullaby (~ 10 seconds) is played overhead on the intercom. I usually hear that lullaby once maybe a few times a week. So why did I hear that lullaby about five times on Monday, and […]