Free iPhone medical apps that every doctor can use

Health Technology
March 3, 2010

by Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi, MD, and Satish Misra

If you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health care related field, trying to find the best free medical apps for the iPhone is a hassle.

Apps such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate the Top Free Medical Apps list in the App Store. Our top 10 iPhone medical apps list contains no such app, …

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Free iPhone medical apps that every doctor can use

Health reform needs to end fee for service medicine

Health Policy
March 3, 2010

As the health reform debate rages on, the central issue of how to improve care while reducing costs remains unaddressed.

Fee-for-service has reduced doctors to assembly line pieceworkers, paid by the office visit and procedure rather than by effectiveness of treatment. The result is an inefficient, costly and dangerous system. It is not unusual for a five minute office visit, which excludes clinical examination or note taking. Many patients/consumers can be …

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Health reform needs to end fee for service medicine

Placebo effect ethics in medical treatment

Conditions and Diseases
March 3, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today

by John Gever, MedPage Today Senior Editor

The placebo effect is a real and therapeutic psychological phenomenon that, with more research, could be exploited more systematically in medical practice, said Australian researchers.

“There is not one placebo effect, but many,” wrote Damien Finniss, MSc, of the University of Sydney in Australia, and colleagues in the Feb. 20 …

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Placebo effect ethics in medical treatment

Quit smoking by using Facebook

Social Media in Medicine
March 2, 2010

At 3am on Jan 1st 2010 my cousin-brother stubbed his last cigarette. New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking, lose weight, or change another bad habit are certainly not uncommon. Having tried — and failed — to quit a number of times before, my cousin took a bold, new approach to quitting. Whether a cleverly devised plan, or just a whim, he decided to post his quitting on Facebook.

On January 4th, …

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Quit smoking by using Facebook

Transgender patients face significant challenges in prison

Patient
March 2, 2010

Imagine that as a child you thought you had been born in the body of the wrong gender. If you were biologically male, in your mind you really thought of yourself as female. Likewise, if you were born in a girl’s body, you thought that you were actually a boy.

Yes, you were probably more interested in children’s role-playing games more often associated with the opposite gender as well, but the …

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Transgender patients face significant challenges in prison

The Danny Williams surgery shouldn’t be controversial

Health Policy
March 2, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today

by Michael Smith

OK, don’t take this the wrong way, but ….

Chill. Relax. Give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. Don’t jump to conclusions. And most of all, think before you speak, blog, natter, comment, or otherwise pontificate on issues of the day.

And when I say ‘think,’ I don’t mean trying to find the …

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The Danny Williams surgery shouldn’t be controversial

Medicare slashes pay to doctors, and what that really means

Health Policy
March 1, 2010

What we’re learning from the 21% Medicare pay cut to physicians that occurred today:

* There really must be a cost-control crisis with Medicare and the only politically-acceptable way to implement those cost controls are by cutting working physicians’ payments.

* There’s was widespread political support for blocking the scheduled pay cuts to doctors, but central government control moves very slowly. That’s because doing so is expensive. For now, doctors have been …

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Medicare slashes pay to doctors, and what that really means

Bipolar disorder and how Rebecca Riley could have been saved

Medications
March 1, 2010

Carolyn Riley’s act of giving her daughter Rebecca an overdose of prescribed medication may have been the immediate cause of Rebecca’s death, the conclusion reached by the jury that convicted her of murder.

Even if, as the prosecutor argued, Carolyn and her husband concocted symptoms of mental illness and the psychiatrist, who diagnosed bipolar disorder, was a gullible enabler, the real guilty party in this story is, in my opinion, …

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Bipolar disorder and how Rebecca Riley could have been saved

Medicare cuts will strengthen doctors’ negotiating position

Health Policy
March 1, 2010

Doctors will soon be wagging the reform dog.

Look at it this way. Expansion of insurance coverage to the 31 million more Americans, as envisioned in the current reform bill, will require more doctors to care for them. The starting entry of 78 million baby boomers in the Medicare pool, starting in 2011, will also take more doctors.

As everybody knows, coverage does not equal access. This is most vividly illustrated in …

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Medicare cuts will strengthen doctors’ negotiating position

Your metformin may smell like dead fish

Medications
March 1, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today

An immediate-release form of the antidiabetic agent metformin has a dead fish odor that may cause patients to stop taking the drug, clinicians warned.

Metformin is known to cause adverse gastrointestinal effects such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, distention, and abdominal pain. Those side effects “often necessitate discontinuing the drug,” a group of physicians and pharmacists …

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Your metformin may smell like dead fish

A nurse practitioner is valuable in hospice and palliative care

Patient
February 28, 2010

by Patrice Villars

Recently, a physician colleague expressed her concern about signing routine hospice admission orders for her elderly patient with end stage heart failure. The routine ‘as needed’ (PRN) orders included phenobarbital, pentobarbital, haloperidol, lorazepam, and morphine. “The hospice nurses know more about this than I do, don’t they?” she said.

Yesterday, a longtime palliative care nurse told me she didn’t want to put her mother with end stage heart …

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A nurse practitioner is valuable in hospice and palliative care

A beautiful Valentine’s Day patient story

Patient
February 28, 2010

“I’ll be back in a little while, Hon’. Will you be okay without me?” the frail old woman asked of her husband. She was standing at the front door and breathing heavily.

“I’ll be fine,” her husband replied from his wheelchair. His voice sounded as weak as his body looked – emaciated, scaly, and full of cancer. “I’m sorry I can’t come with you.”

The woman opened the front door. A gust …

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A beautiful Valentine’s Day patient story

How patient comments will affect your physician practice

Physician
February 27, 2010

Originally published in HCPLive.com

by Owen Dahl and Altamash Rahman

“Her MA is very rude, uncompassionate. Dr. ABCD doesn’t return phone calls. They’re not helpful and not good with following up with the care plan for patients. We’re new seeing this doctor, but will never go back. I would not recommend this practice at all!!!!!!”

How would you handle a comment like this when …

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How patient comments will affect your physician practice

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The Haiti earthquake and its broken health infrastructure

Physician
February 27, 2010

Dr. Barth Green co-founded Project Medishare, which has worked in Haiti for two decades. He led the first team of U.S. physicians to Port-au-Prince after the earthquake and, together with the University of Miami’s Global Institute, spearheaded the development of a 240-bed tent hospital that is now the country’s largest functioning urgent care hospital. His group is working with the U.S. government to establish Haiti’s first rehabilitation hospital. Green …

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The Haiti earthquake and its broken health infrastructure

Why cancer screening is not a black or white decision

Conditions and Diseases
February 26, 2010

Last month I saw a 65 year-old woman with a mass in her kidney in clinic for follow up. She had recently transferred her medical care to our clinic after her insurance changed.

She came with a few medical problems including high blood pressure, tobacco use and arthritis — diseases which are the bread and butter of primary care medicine — but she also came with a history of a mass …

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Why cancer screening is not a black or white decision

How patient satisfaction scores can affect physicians

Physician
February 26, 2010

I am very blessed. The hospital where I practice, while concerned with patient satisfaction, does not worship at its altar.

That is, so far our administrators seem to understand that people will occasionally be angry or unsatisfied, and that such dissatisfaction is within the realm of real life. We still have people storm out of the emergency department, prattling on about lawyers and lawsuits, promising to go to another hospital in …

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How patient satisfaction scores can affect physicians

Condoms don’t work all the time, and here’s why

Patient
February 26, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today

by Chris Emery, MedPage Today Contributing Writer

Condoms that don’t fit properly are more likely to break, slip off, and decrease the pleasure of both partners during sex, which may discourage their use and undermine their public health benefits, a survey found.

Ill-fitting condoms were reported by 44.7% of the men polled. They were more likely than …

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Condoms don’t work all the time, and here’s why

Can doctors learn medicine from physician lounges?

Physician
February 25, 2010

I just finished rotating at a community hospital where one of the most interesting things I’ve enjoyed is stopping by the Doctor’s Lounge. I can always count on a getting coffee there and hearing some good conversation – doctors asking for input on interesting cases, laughing, sharing stories, both personal and professional, and catching up on each other’s busy lives. In fact, I ran into an old friend of mine …

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Can doctors learn medicine from physician lounges?

Value doctors as listeners to prevent primary care burn out

Physician
February 25, 2010

A recent editorial in the Boston Globe addressed the dearth of primary care physicians. The piece concluded: “Federal funding for new residency slots should follow reforms that address the underlying reasons – principally money – that lead doctors to choose to specialize.”

Money is certainly important. But there is another obstacle to attracting primary care doctors that is more subtle, though perhaps equally important. Consider the following story.

Recently I had …

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Value doctors as listeners to prevent primary care burn out

Never events in hospitals depend on patient risk

Health Policy
February 25, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today

by John Gever, MedPage Today Senior Editor

Occurrence of some so-called “never events” in hospitals may depend partly on unmodifiable risk factors such as patient characteristics, undermining the rationale for denying Medicare payment for their treatment, researchers said.

Analysis of some 890,000 surgeries performed in 1,368 hospitals showed that patient age and pre-existing conditions such as weight …

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Never events in hospitals depend on patient risk

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