Oh boy…
It’s been awhile since I started this blog. My initial purpose for writing as The Lonely Surgeon was to help docs who perhaps missed some classes in business and management along the way survive in the wilderness of medicine. Now that my MBA is complete and I have some time to devote to this project, I had hoped to reboot things this summer with some expanded topics, more Downloadable Goodness and generally more discussion.
Grand plans, indeed…
With this COVID-19 crisis, however, we are all faced with life-shattering changes. If you thought the healthcare system in our country was bad before, well… you were entirely correct. But now? Pardon the French, but what the hell are we all supposed to do? Medicine is supposed to be about staying connected to our patients. Talking to them. Examining them. Treating them. How is a surgeon with a predominantly elective practice — or most other docs, for that matter — supposed to do THAT?
Granted, our ED and ICU docs are busy. Way too busy. So our system must understandably shift in a way that puts resources where they are needed the most. Even though our news is changing almost hourly, it’s probably a safe bet that this won’t get better for awhile. How do we stay afloat until we reach a new normal?
So if you’ll pardon the dust as I work through a site overhaul, I felt it was important to relaunch this blog now. As in NOW. Survival mode. I don’t have all of the answers. Heck, I have very few answers these days! But I will share my own experiences in a way that I hope is helpful to others in the elective practice fields. If something works, I’ll put it here. If something doesn’t work, I’ll share that, too. And I welcome discussion! This is a time where we all need to be collaborative and clever. If we pool our resources, we’ll stay afloat and piece that lifeboat together.
So during this transition, I would kindly refer you to my original blog site The Lonely Surgeon. If something looks a little funny or a link doesn’t quite work, I will apologize in advance. Eventually, I hope to make everything available in one place. I just feel that it’s important now to get the dialogue going rather than fussing about graphics and layout.
So starting tomorrow, I will collate and share my quick-launch survival project for this week: The Video Visit Clinic. Yes, it turns out that we will all need to get comfortable with the Selfie Age whether we like it or not. Be sure to check back here for tomorrow’s post to see how this experiment works…. It should be pretty entertaining if nothing else.
Until then, my friends… You are not alone.
— TLS
THE LONELY SURGEON 