World Kidney Day is celebrated to acknowledge all who are
suffering from kidney disease and to all kidney professionals who take care of
patients with kidney disease.
Every year, I write about why Nephrology is the best field in medicine during
kidney month. It’s my favorite month- as it’s my birthday month, coming of
Spring, and showcases our profession of Nephrology.
While Nephrology may be facing challenges in recruiting, there
is a lot of deep medicine in what we practice in nephrology. As Eric Topol says in his recent book, "most of us are practicing shallow medicine". In other words, we fall for the quick cook
book algorithms and screenings and are avoiding the personalized medicine. I think as a field, Nephrology allows for a more deeper form of medicine. Given lack of many randomized trials, we rely on
our experience, patho-physiology and clinical acumen a fair amount and this takes us away from cook book medicine.
How does one treat a C3 glomerulonephritis? The recent KDIGO2019 update tried to shed some light on that but basically we borrowed our
treatment from other glomerular diseases and then we used patho-physiology based
strategy of inhibiting the complement cascade since it’s a complement disorder.
It's not just the science....what is also exciting about Nephrology is that we are the
front-runners in adopting social media in it’s education and spreading of
knowledge. Other fields in medicine followed but thanks to some great strides
made early on, we achieved this as a field. AJKD is probably one of the first
few sub-specialty journals to have it’s own blog.
Finally, we all love to have fun. Go out there this month
and join and create some renal madness. Oh sorry, we cannot say renal- shall we
change all renal to kidney ( as most journals want us to) or should be say
NephMadness!!. Yes, we also are the pioneers in creating games in medicine.
What else can you ask for from your doctor- detail oriented, compassionate, smart( extremely), most well
dressed in the hospital, have one of the least burn out rates, make decent money,
are social media friendly and make good leaders( med directors in dialysis
units).
In addition, for the science lovers, nephrologist also are good scientists and willing to publish both positive and negative trials in medicine( a balanced fluid approach).
Hmm. and before I close out, we love to create collaborative fields in medicine- Cardionephrology, Onconephrology, Diabetonephrology, ICU Nephrology, OB nephrology.... creating niches and making great strides.
Happy Kidney Month
