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Dr. Steele’s great adventure

Last week two of my favorite patients — young sisters — stopped by my office to say goodbye, then got in their car and hit the westbound road to Nevada, and a new life. They were scared witless,...

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We are being damned: Americans losing faith in failed health care system

We who lead in the American health care system — primarily physicians and hospitals — are slowly having our credibility with the public eroded. The main reason for this is our collective failure to...

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Maine needs a rockstar physician leader

If there is a Mick Jagger of medicine, it is Don Berwick, M.D., America’s health care safety and reform rockstar. More than any other American physician, he has led us to improve safety in health care...

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How the 19-year-old brain can both awe and appall us

Among the most mysterious things on the planet is the brain of a male in his late teens. It has been designed by evolution for purpose without much perspective, passion without much reason,...

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America to health care: We want our money back

Last week, for the first time ever, I paid for my health insurance directly out of my bank account; I wrote a check for $1200 to cover our health insurance for the month I am between jobs. For the last...

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More than a million thanks

Over the last 38 years Maine has given me a mighty fine wife, a mighty fine life and much more. If I was a dog my tail would just about wag off every time I think about all the people of this state...

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Expanding Maine Medicaid — a fact-finding mission

In the debate about whether to expand Maine Medicaid to cover 50,000 largely uninsured Mainers making less than $11,500-$15,000 annually, it’s worth comparing some of the rhetoric to some of the facts....

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Am I losing my freedom to aging?

When I was young, it seemed as if my mind could declare its independence over my body in order to do whatever I wanted without limits. That body was a limber, resilient, well-tuned bill of rights to do...

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Will be hard to woo Americans away from the ER

If God ran a hospital department, it would be the ER. It’s a place where miracles can happen, the sick of heart and spirit are welcome, and how high you rank depends on how sick you are. His head nurse...

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Missing my Maine patients

I miss my patients, and in the two months since I left them behind for a new job in Ohio, I have thought of them every darn day. I have wondered how they were, and worried selfishly that no one would...

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Getting radical in patient care safety, part 1

In the good old days of my medical training, when I made a mistake I was publicly flayed by my physician superiors, excoriated by guilt at the harm I had caused a patient, and then vowed never to make...

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Getting radical in patient care safety — Part 2

I used to think I was Dr. Wizard Oz — all knowing, and all powerful. Twenty-five years in practice have hauled back the green curtain from my illusion and exposed this truth: my patients are better off...

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Being the good shepherd for my family patients

There are times when I think a bit of hell on earth is to be a physician sitting at the bedside of a sick family member in the hospital. You know everything that will hurt, every treatment that can...

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The wildest time ever in American health care

The American health care industry has fallen down an “Alice in Wonderland” rabbit hole, and awakened in the strangest, wildest time in its history. Hospitals are spending millions of dollars trying to...

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In a disaster, will your hospital be ready?

There were many who died at the hands of Hurricane Katrina and shouldn’t have. There was also something that should have died and did not — the inadequate readiness of many American hospitals for...

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POLST — A better way to die

Some day, hopefully far off, I wish to feel a gentle, final goodbye kiss on my cheek from each member of my family. I want to know those are loving kisses of my impending death, that we are of one mind...

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The Obamacare mess

Many of us who have cared for critically ill patients recognize the point America is at in its health care reform journey; it is the same place critical care teams often end up about two weeks into the...

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Hospitals: A special place to be for the holidays

For the Americans who spent them there, hospitals were a special place to be for the holidays. That sounds odd, but for the many thousands of patients and caregivers in them on Christmas or New Year’s,...

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The beautiful walk — don’t take it for granted

Olivia was five, and I could tell by the way she limped into my emergency room that, whatever else she enjoyed in life, she would never enjoy the simple, extraordinary pleasure of a normal walk. The...

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Dr. Erik Steele: After 16 years and 300,000 words, a final farewell

If pigs could fly, none that ever winged wondrously aloft would have more fun than I have had arranging almost 300,000 words into 426 columns for the Bangor Daily News over the last 16 years. But at...

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