May is recognized as National Arthritis Awareness Month, a time to bring attention to the more than 46 million Americans living with arthritis and related inflammatory diseases. In honor of the occasion, the Rheumatology Research Foundation is launching #RheumLife, a social media campaign to bring awareness to the severity of rheumatic disease. Through Twitter and…
Recruiting new patients requires a multi-faceted approach. A rheumatologist must have a solid brand and marketing platform, as well as an active strategy to attract and convert new patients. This might involve embracing social media, having a website, developing a referral network, being involved in your community and nurturing existing patients. Your brand includes such…
A recent JAMA Pediatrics article found that 83% of clinicians admitted to coming to work while sick and 95% admitted to knowing that it could be dangerous for their patients.1 “The decision to work sick is shaped by systems-level and sociocultural factors,” the study authors wrote. In speaking with rheumatologists on the matter, I found…
As much as 80% of employee turnover can be attributed to bad hiring decisions, the Harvard Business Review reported.1 And turnover costs are high—one report estimated them to be 100–300% of the base salary of a replaced employee (with 150% commonly cited).2 Given this, the importance of hiring the right employees can’t be underestimated. So…
Many rheumatologists chose the profession because they wanted to delve more deeply into rheumatic diseases than internal medicine calls for. “For most, this level of specialization is sufficient and worthy of a lifelong devotion and commitment,” says S. Sam Lim, MD, MPH, associate professor, Medicine and Epidemiology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta. “However, some…
To blog or not to blog? As a rheumatologist, you may have pondered this question. Perhaps getting some insight from rheumatologists who already blog and a professional blog writer may help you find the answer. Obviously, if you devoted time to blogging you would want it to be beneficial. For Paul Sufka, MD, rheumatologist, HealthPartners,…
It’s a scenario that occurs all too often. After you tell someone you’re a rheumatologist, you receive that look—the blank stare, as if you’ve spoken to them in a foreign language. Six years ago, this scenario sparked a conversation among the ACR’s leaders about the importance of promoting our profession to the public, including key…
Advocacy was front and center at the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, and in case you missed something, Will Harvey, MD, provides a summary here…
I am a few weeks post-retirement. Having written thank you notes and completed urgent home projects, I swing in a hammock at our currently fire-threatened cabin north of Winthrop, Wash., and reflect. I feel like a young boy while freely flipping pages of a hand-scribed picture book, The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. She…
It takes a great deal of time and money to produce clinical practice guidelines for rheumatic diseases. No matter how well a treatment inhibits inflammatory cytokines, it won’t lower disease activity without one essential factor: patient compliance. “You can’t propose a treatment algorithm in your research that no patient would actually use,” says Veena Ranganath,…