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Is the quantified self movement the future of American health?

Health Technology

April 6, 2012

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
-Lord Kelvin

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Of course the quantified self movement with its self-tracking, body hacking, and data-driven life started in San Francisco when Gary Wolf started the Quantified Self blog in 2007. By 2012, there were regular meetings in 50 cities and a European and American conference. …

Health comes from community

Michael Moore

Health Policy

April 6, 2012

Recently I had the privilege of travelling to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the inaugural BC Forum of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research. We had a wonderful host in the Department of Global Health of Simon Fraser University (and especially from Drs. Craig Jones & Vic Neufield). It was a challenging and pivotal conference for me.

That is not what I want to share now. The conference started with …

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Health comes from community

8 reasons why I love my patients

Omada Idachaba, MD

Physician

April 6, 2012

A few months ago, I came out with a post on why I love my own doctor. Today I want to celebrate my patients, both past and present. For me, without the experience I have had over the past 14 years, I would not have enjoyed medicine quite as much as I do.

What I like the most about medicine is the ability to interact with people. That’s what clinical medicine is all …

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8 reasons why I love my patients

My philanthropic advice to America’s healthcare supporters

Kristine Christlieb Canavan

Health Policy

April 5, 2012

If you have a brain and work in healthcare, you know chances are good that David Houle and Jonathan Fleece’s prediction that “one third of hospitals will close by 2020” is on the money. Until a recent marriage and move took me to St. Louis, my job was to sell a Texas hospital system’s plans for the future to major donors; and throughout my five-year tenure, the looming and pervasive …

Why Facebook should be a template for electronic medical records

Chris Rangel, MD

Health Technology

April 5, 2012

The Internet beta 0.5 version was nothing like it is today. Back in the ’80s and the early ’90s the most common way to access the outside world was to use a phone modem to dial the number of a remote computer. These primitive servers usually ran DOS based software called a Bulletin Board System (BBS) which allowed users to post messages to each other. For the most part, these …

Greening the operating room

T. Kate Huncke, MD and Susan M. Ryan, MD, PhD

Physician

April 5, 2012

A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

In an effort to recognize April as Earth Month, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is taking action to help hospitals across the country green their operating rooms with a white paper by the ASA Task Force on Environmental Sustainability.

Physicians such as anesthesiologists are responsible for the …

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Greening the operating room

Bearing the burden of the uphill battle against childhood obesity

James Haddad

Conditions and Diseases

April 5, 2012

In recent years, childhood overweight and obesity statistics have received a good deal of media attention, but this has done little to slow their rise. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that nearly 1 in 5 children aged 2-19 are obese. Even more concerning, since 1980 obesity rates have tripled in the 6-11 and 12-19 age groups.

Our …

Each moment with a patient is a privilege

Rich Joseph

Physician

April 5, 2012

I recently worked a shift at one of the free, student run clinics here in Palo Alto. Compared to a previous shift a while back, today was quite calm with a manageable flow of patients. In fact, the number of volunteer hands far outnumbered the number of patients so I wondered if my services were even necessary.

Should I duck out early to go work on one of the four problem …

Why American health care is inching closer to veterinary clinic status

Robert Sewell, MD

Health Policy

April 5, 2012

Have you ever owned a dog? If so, did you ever take him to the vet? I’m sure that even if you don’t own a pet, you understand the gist of the question, but now I’d like to ask it again in a different way. Before taking your animal to the doggie doctor, do you ask the little guy which vet he wants to see, or what treatment he wants …

Communicate and strengthen your relationship with your doctor

Martine Ehrenclou, MA

Patient

April 4, 2012

An excerpt from The Take-Charge Patient: How You Can Get The Best Medical Care (Lemon Grove Press) which will be released May 15, 2012.

Your Relationship with Your Doctor

“A good relationship with your physician can lead to better medical care.”
-Zouhdi A. Hajjaj, MD, internal Medicine, Yarmouthport, MA

Your relationship with your doctor is an important one that can last for many years. It is a partnership. You and your doctor collaborate to maintain your …

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Jake McClure

Medical Education

April 4, 2012

In my first week of the 3rd year surgery clerkship, I was introduced to some of the “Rules of Surgery.” For example, “All bleeding stops eventually,” or, “Everyone doesn’t need to die with an incision,” and even “The enemy of good is better.”

Boarded for this particular afternoon was a pancreaticoduodenectomy (the Whipple procedure), which for students is known to be a must-see operation if given the opportunity. However, the night …

The real doctors will see you in the morning

Samuel Wasswa-Kintu

Patient

April 4, 2012

“Wait, you said you’re a medical student?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I will be seeing a real doctor though, right?”

“Yes, of course!” I smiled, then attempted to defuse his frustration with a quip about getting two opinions for the price of one.

He didn’t laugh, understandably. He was only 25, built like a linebacker, draped in a backwards hospital gown that exposed his unfamiliarity with this environment, among other things. Yet he was here …

I changed my perspective about patient participation in their care

Itzhak Brook, MD

Physician

April 4, 2012

I am a physician who was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent laryngectomy four years ago. Prior to being diagnosed and treated for cancer I did not welcome or encourage my patients’ participation in their own care. Admittedly, there were instances when such input was helpful, but more often I regarded patients with data based on information obtained from the Web as a challenge to my expertise and authority. I …

Why doctors should screen for poverty

Naheed Dosani, MD and Jeremy Petch, PhD

Physician

April 4, 2012

“A 41 year-old woman with no documented medical history or family history of disease presents to you complaining of occasional chest pains on exertion. How many would order a stress test to rule-out cardiovascular disease?” asks Dr. Gary Bloch, to a captivated audience of resident physicians currently in training at an academic learning day – a few hands go up.

“Now how about if she were a smoker or had high …

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Why doctors should screen for poverty

Skills primary care doctors of the future will need

Peter Alperin, MD

Physician

April 3, 2012

By 2015, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the U.S. health care system will be short approximately 30,000 primary care doctors. Yet, everything we read says that primary care physicians are the linchpins of the new (really rediscovered) coordinated care models being talked about by health care policy cognoscenti. What gives?

Since the mid-1990s the number of medical students pursuing a career in primary care has been on a steady, sinking decline, …

Improving patient safety in ambulatory care

David B. Nash, MD, MBA

Health Policy

April 3, 2012

Back in 2000, a group of experts convened by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) reported that, although substantial medical error and injury was occurring in the ambulatory setting, very little research had been done to understand the reasons why.

To address what they recognized as a serious issue, this expert panel made 11 specific recommendations that were intended to stimulate research in this area.

Fast forward to the present …

The double tragedy of medicine’s battlefield mentality

Dike Drummond, MD

Physician

April 3, 2012

The mother of the dead baby sat in her husband’s arms and simply asked “why?” over and over through the Vietnamese interpreter. I had no way to answer the question. I didn’t know why. There was nothing to point to. No defect in the child or mother or the actions taken in L&D.

All I could do was say “I am so sorry” … for your baby, for you … for …

The obviousness of long waiting times in the emergency department

StorytellERdoc, MD

Physician

April 3, 2012

Emergency, as per the all-knowing Webster, is defined as an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action. Furthermore, an emergency is also defined as an urgent need for assistance or relief.

These definitions sound pretty spot-on, right? When thinking about emergency room settings, even, one can easily correlate the words of Webster to what one would …

How doctors should adopt new technology

Donald Tex Bryant

Health Technology

April 3, 2012

My primary care physician, the last time I was in for a checkup, had not adopted ePrescribing or started using an electronic health record (EHR). My understanding is that the medical group to which he belongs had not rolled out these capabilities to him yet but was planning to do so. Hopefully, this summer when I see him again he will be plugged into the electronic health record that the …

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How doctors should adopt new technology

Reducing training will diminish the status of physicians

Karen S. Sibert, MD

Medical Education

April 3, 2012

If Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel gets his wish, tomorrow’s physicians won’t deserve to be paid as well as physicians today because they won’t be as well trained.

Dr. Emanuel, a brother of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a chief apologist for the Affordable Care Act, is the lead author of a startling opinion column in the March 21 Journal of the American Medical Association. He argues that there is “substantial waste” in …

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