Matthew's Blog
Twitter And The Danton-Robespierre Effect
The guillotine is a hungry mistress, and will eventually turn on those feeding it. Consider the two leaders of the French Revolution, Georges-Jacques Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre, both of who led the charge against the unjust Ancien Régime, but both of which...
Would I Advice Someone to Become A Physician?
With rare exceptions, today my answer would be no. Why? Because I think for most people the debt burden (which on average is around $200,000) is simply too high, and it will drive nearly every quality of life/career choices for 10-15 years after medical school....
RVUs—An In-between Word in Healthcare
Roy Peter Clark, in the book Writing Tools, has a chapter called “Climb Up and Down the Level of Abstraction”, in which he discusses how powerful concrete words (the bottom of the ladder) and abstract words (the top of the ladder) are versus the bureaucratic,...
Why I Tweet Photos of My Cat
Most of what I write and tweet about are superficially boring topics to most people. This is intentional. For example, although I happen to have fairly stable political and ethical opinions, and although I spend quite a lot of intellectual energy and capital...
Herodotus and Why should Physicians Should Avoid “Going Viral”
Consider this story from Herodotus, The Histories, which you may have run across in college: Now Periander was to begin with milder than his father, but after he had held converse by messenger with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus, he became much more bloodthirsty...
The Animosity Towards BigX
There does seem to be quite a lot of animosity out there towards BigX, where BigX includes BigPharma, BigGovernment, BigTech, BigTobacco, BigSugar, BigInsurance, BigHealth, BigAuto, BigAg, BigDefense,… All of these “BigXs” drift towards dehumanization and therefore...
My Top Blog for February
One advantage of blogging daily is that just by sheer volume, I may hit pay dirt, at the end of each month I enjoy reviewing my 30ish blog posts to see where my intellectual shovel may have hit. In February, the choice is easy. My most important blog was "ΨMorality”,...
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...