Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from RheumNow. Dr. Jack Cush tells his podcast story - the genesis, keys to success and recommendations on how to get into podcasting - for teaching, practice, fun or influence. Be sure to register for RheumNow.Live 2022 - March 19 & 20, 2022 in Las Colinas, Texas.

Are you a zoomatologist or a doomsatologist? Zoom has replaced the meeting, the teleconference or the board meeting. If your old meetings were bad, then your replacement zoom meetings will also be bad, if not worse. Largely because you have failed to master the medium. Here are the rules of Zoom.

HCQ is one of the safest meds used in rheumatology, but new claims data suggests a small increase in the risk of malformations associated with first-trimester HCQ use. The March 2021 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology studied the risk of major congenital malformations during the first trimester of pregnancy in women with rheumatic disease taking HCQ.

As many of you are aware, I have written and spoken on COVID-19 extensively over these past 20 months, and just last month wrote about the dangers of the delta variant. In July, things took an unexpected turn when I developed a breakthrough infection with the delta variant.

The 2021 Medscape Survey on Physician burnout ranks rheumatology second, just behind Critical Care medicine. The survey included over 12,000 physcians from 20 specialties. While 42% of MDs claimed to be burnt-out, Rheumatologists claimed this 50% of the time. The top 3 this year were Critical care (51%), Rheumatology (50%) and infectious disease (49%).