Amy Givler, MD, Author at Christian Medical & Dental Associations

Doing More By Doing Less

Faith-based health professionals care with compassion and respect for all patients, but they will leave medicine rather than violate their conscience if forced to participate in morally objectionable procedures and prescriptions.

Person-First Language

Words are important. The words I use to describe my patients, even if I am only thinking those words and not speaking them, affect how I feel about them and how I treat them. I’ve known this for a long time, so I work hard to guard both my thinking and my speech as I care for patients. I don’t consider myself prone to making snap judgments about people based on their appearance—that is, I don’t see myself as biased.

Unmasking Medical Marijuana

At age 60, I can pretty much say I will never recommend marijuana to any of my patients. I have far too clear memories of my teenage years, when I knew many friends and family who smoked pot, to their detriment. In high school it wasn’t hard to tell who was using regularly because it interfered with their learning. They seemed slightly disoriented and less aware of what was going on around them.

Transgender Athletics: A Justice Issue

Nobody who knows me would call me an athlete. If I wasn’t picked last for team sports at school, then it was next to last. Every time. Because of this pathetic natural ability, I have never been one who availed myself of all the sports opportunities I was given.

A Plug for Written Prayers

When I was a young Christian, I thought written prayers were stale, while my own prayers were spontaneous and alive. Now I think the opposite. Left to my own devices, my prayers sound remarkably similar to one another. And by similar, I mean dull. Heartfelt, but dull.

Trusting Vaccines

Worldwide, only clean water has saved more lives than vaccines. Wild smallpox has been eliminated, and polio nearly so. Twelve other major diseases that were the scourge of mankind have been controlled. So why would anyone not want to control disease? Dr. Amy Givler delves into this question in this week’s blog post on The Point.

Opioids: A Brief History

Pills tumbling from bottle into open hand

In this week’s blog post, Dr. Amy Givler shares the story of how opioids became a problem in every community in America, including yours. And it is the story of how opioid addiction has overwhelmed and devastated some communities, maybe yours.

Treating the New Chronic Pain Patient

I had a tooth pulled last month. I wasn’t expecting much post-op pain because the tooth already had a root canal, years earlier. Yet with my mouth clamped on a large cotton wad after the procedure, I heard my oral surgeon say to his assistant, “Print out a script for Norco 7.5’s – 30 of them.”

Placebos: Can we use them? Should we use them?

The word “placebo” actually comes from a mis-translation of the Bible. Psalm 116:9 in the Latin Vulgate roughly states, “I shall please the dead in the land of the living.” Later translations better reflected the original Hebrew with, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living,” (KJV) but in the Middle Ages, the Latin Vulgate was the only Bible most people knew.