Healthcare’s Red Flag Term: “Efficiency”
In thermodynamics, efficiency is the percentage of heat energy that is transformed into work. For physicians, efficiency means achieving maximum patient benefit with minimal time and effort. For healthcare corporations, efficiency is all about how many patients can be...
Typing Speed, EHRs, and Dehumanization
As an employee, when you work with a computer in any capacity, you have agreed to all of your computer activity is being monitored. In theory, this is both reasonable and legal. It’s the corporation’s hardware and software and you should only use it as part of your...
How Photography and Sculpture Can Inform Physician Careers
I am currently taking a short 6-week class from a professional photographer called Shoot-To Share, in which we students receive critical feedback about our work. One of my goals for this course is to explore the relationship between photography and sculpture. For...
Emojis: Intellectual Crutch or An Expansive New Language?
From a writer’s perspective, I am curious about my use of emojis. When I use them—which mostly on Twitter—is it as a shortcut, a writing crutch, a tool to use because I am either too lazy or too craft-deficient to write with more nuance and elegance? Or do they expand...
My One, True Tweet
Last week was my #MyTwitterAnniversary! 13,400 tweets over 9 years. That’s roughly 4 tweets a day. But have I ever written one great tweet? One real tweet? One true tweet? Or, quoting Hemingway (rather than JRR Tolkien, and “one tweet to rule them all!”), have I done...
Why I’m No “Thought Leader”
Although I have plenty of thoughts, I am no leader. Part of the reason is definitional. I don't have any significant community of followers, therefore I can't be a leader. However, another part of this is intentional. I don’t want to be a leader because I believe all...
Why I Write Goals (Even For My Photography Course)
For any projects which I intend to pursue seriously, I start off with pen and paper, writing out my goals. For example, I am taking my eighth or ninth photography course, and here are the goals which I just posted to my Flickr group: Would love to hear other people's...
Healthcare and “Digital Phenotyping”
Attending a recent online Health Chat by one of the FAANG companies, a software developer referred to a patient’s “digital phenotype”. A phenotype is the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the...
Digital Sleep in the “Hot Corner”
For me, the most valuable real estate on my iMac is the upper-left corner of my screen. Why? Because it is a “hot corner” : A digital action initiated by cursor placement in any of the screen corners through the iOS Screensaver app, which in the case of my iMac's...
The Pomodoro Technique
When I do serious time blocks of writing, I use a modification of the Pomodoro Technique. The classic Pomodoro Technique is a writing system in which you set a physical timer for 25 minutes in which you do a focused burst of writing, followed by a 3-5 minute break,...