Jan

29

Chicken Soup For the Emergency Medicine Resident’s Soul: Inspiring Stories From the Emergency Room

January 29, 2008 | 22 Comments

Field of Dreams
There is a lot of Medicaid money floating around out there, particulary in the pediatric population where a large portion of the patients are covered by the Children’s Health insurance Program (CHIP).  To legally acquire as much of this bonanza as possible, my hospital built a dedicated Pediatric Emergency Department which opened two […]

Jan

24

What I Do, Part Two

January 24, 2008 | 7 Comments

(This is an another article directed more to people who are interested in a medical career than to those already involved.  Feel free to read along but I again offer my usual warning that there is nothing profound or exciting to follow and I cannot be held responsible for your boredom. I’m going to try […]

Jan

19

Pandarandom: Brief Thoughts

January 19, 2008 | 18 Comments

Four Percent
Okay, I confess.  I didn’t study for Step 3, the last United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) required to obtain an unrestricted medical license in the United States. My strategy to pass it (which I did by a comfortable margin)?  Every time I felt the urge to study I just told myself that 96 percent of […]

Jan

14

Freeloader Mothership

January 14, 2008 | 43 Comments

(Let us delve, oh my long-suffering and indulgent readers, into the realm of real economics, an area of study much neglected in the utopian groves of academe.  It’s almost as if our isolated professariat, protected behind the great bulwark of tenure as they are, have become afraid to get their hands a little dirty discussing economics in any […]

Jan

11

What I Do

January 11, 2008 | 13 Comments

(With a hat-tip to the Happy Hospitalist.  Nothing new or profound here so my regular readers may, if they desire, ignores this article completely or read on and forgive the basic level of information presented. -PB) 
A young reader writes, “Dear Dr. Bear, I am a senior in high school and am thinking about being a doctor.  What does your job involve?”
I […]

Jan

9

Freeloader Nirvana

January 9, 2008 | 36 Comments

No Cows Were Harmed
Your typical leftist, a person conditioned for shameless abasement to every social issue that can be blamed on his distant ancestor who allegedly once shot an indian, eats his bowl of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with the same gusto he usually reserves for giving other people’s money away in the name of social justice.  Ben & Jerry’s, […]

Jan

5

Freeloader Heaven

January 5, 2008 | 86 Comments

Screw Social Justice
If you proposed to me that all of the poor were lazy and desired nothing more than to live lives of sloth and overindulgence; smoking their cigarettes, drinking their cheap booze, shooting their drugs, and having their lllegitimate babies willy-nilly at the taxpayer’s expense I would call you a starry-eyed idealist and and someone without a firm […]

Jan

2

My Shortest Post Ever in Which, After Letting On That We See a Lot of Minor Complaints in Emergency Medicine it is Explained by Another Writer What the Specialty of Emergency Medicine is All About

January 2, 2008 | 9 Comments

Read it and weep.