From Our Blog

By Mick Krasner, MD

I remember quite clearly the very first patient I was assigned to visit and “interview” alone as a medical student. This older man was at the VA Medical Center, just a short walk from the medical school campus in La Jolla, California. I made several visits over a few weeks period with the understanding that I was to practice the interview skills that I was learning in the interview course. What did not make a lot of sense to me was…

By Ron Epstein, MD

The disturbing developments in politics and healthcare, locally and globally, are gut-wrenching for many of us. In our roles as clinicians and teachers, it is hard to know what do to next. Consider the worlds you inhabit and touch – your home, your workplace, your family, your communities, your organizations, your social networks, your “bubbles.” Here, we all have freedom, often more than we think.

By Mick Krasner, MD

All clinicians experience from time to time what we call the “difficult patient.” For just a moment, as you read those words, reflect on what arises within you. It may be that you want to stop reading. Interesting. It may be that a restlessness arises within you…

By Mick Krasner, MD

At the time I did not realize the importance in my life of gazing toward horizons. In retrospect I can see how much of my sense of belonging, sense of awe, sense of possibility, sense of the cosmos, and hence a sense of meaning and purpose were connected not only metaphorically but also on a very physical level with horizons…

By Mick Krasner, MD

Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum, in a recent essay about the nature of calling in medicine, raised concerns about trends reported among some younger physicians as she inquired about medicine as a calling or simply a job. To illustrate a point in that essay questioning calling as a primary motivator, she shared a story about a colleague’s grandfather who, while he was working in a power plant, risked life and limb to save another co-worker “because there was a human in need.”  While true that many would respond similarly and not out of a sense of calling, I believe a career in medicine has always asked more…

By Ron Epstein, MD

Because so many of us, as health professionals, are focused on meeting others’ needs, separating what is most important to you rather than to someone else can be difficult. Sometimes things that seem obligatory might not be quite so. Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness rather than to ask permission. For me, ignoring often feels like a mini-rebellion, exciting and scary at the same time, liberating me to do what matters most – not only what matters most to me, but also what matters most to those whom I serve…

By Mick Krasner, MD

Researchers surveying 130,000 people from 125 countries found that 69% were willing to donate 1% of their personal income to combat climate change. However, most of those people believe they are in the minority (which they are not, by a long shot). This example reflects a different, but also accurate, account of a new quality of connection that we have with each other, with the planet, and with ourselves…

By Mick Krasner, MD

At some place in many of our lives, we reach a point or go through an experience that stops us, that feels foreign, that seems to throw away the compass directing the vector moving us forward, that exiles us from others and from ourselves. And when this happens, when it seems most certainly that we have run out of choices, we are forced to start, perhaps for the first time…

By Ron Epstein, MD

After fulfilling major social obligations and professional accomplishments, we have greater opportunity to be creative and connected, relatively unfettered by the (internal and external) pressures of achievement. Albert Camus, the French novelist-philosopher, summed it up in his four conditions for happiness: time in the open air, creativity, a creature to nurture and love, and freedom from ambition. The troisième age is about growth, generativity, and connection. A time to ask reflective questions…

By Mick Krasner, MD

One of my mindfulness teachers, when explaining the quality of letting go and acknowledging how very difficult that can be, held her hand out in a clinched fist, describing how tightly attached we can be to a desire or an outcome or an ambition…