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Did doctors know best in the Charlie Gard case?

Physician

September 7, 2017

For American conservatives, Britain’s NHS is an antiquated Orwellian dystopia. For Brits, even those who don’t love the NHS, American conservatives are better suited to spaghetti westerns, such as Fistful of Dollars, than reality.

The twain are unlikely to meet after the recent press surrounding Charlie Gard, the infant, now deceased, with a rare, fatal mitochondrial disorder in which mitochondrial DNA is depleted — mitochondrial depletion disorder (MDD). In this condition, …

For a long, happy career, be more than just a doctor

Passive Income, MD

Physician Finance

September 7, 2017

“You’re a doctor; focus on being a doctor.”

This piece of advice was recently given to me by my own father, in regards to my multiple ambitions outside of the medical field. He himself only recently retired from a long career as a surgeon, so his opinion is the result of years of experience.

His advice got me thinking.

What makes for career longevity in our field? Statistics show that more than half …

Co-production of care: A different kind of health care than we’re used to

Sylvester Jones and Laura C. Leviton, PhD

Health Policy

September 7, 2017

More than anything, Willie needed a place to pee.

Elaine needed help walking.

Willie is homeless; Elaine is affluent. They both needed someone to listen to them and help them find solutions to their most pressing everyday challenges. That’s called “co-production of care.”

When Willie found out he had congestive heart failure, his doctor put him on beta blockers with diuretics.

The medications made Willie feel better, but there was one problem: Because of …

Putting down the scalpel: The aging surgeon

John C. Hagan III, MD

Physician

September 7, 2017

In the early epoch of human development, mankind learned to shape and sharpen wood, stone and metal objects to facilitate plunging them deep into other humans’ chests, abdomens, skulls and eyes in the ultimate form of conflict resolution.

Over tens of thousands of years, other less pugilistic and more compassionate humans crudely — but later artfully — insinuated an increasingly sophisticated array of implements into the human corpus to cure diseases, …

Can we slow the aging process?

Stephen C. Schimpff, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 7, 2017

Part of a series.

Can we slow the aging process? The answer is a definite yes. It’s not easy and requires some real diligence, but aging can be slowed.

When thinking about a car we all know “old parts were out.” It is equally true for the human body. But less appreciated is the fact that we can either slow or speed up the process, just as good preventive …

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Can we slow the aging process?

Are CTE headlines overblown? A radiologist investigates.

Dr. Saurabh Jha

Conditions and Diseases

September 6, 2017

A study published in JAMA looking at the brains of former football players donated to a brain bank, a highly selective sample, found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a degenerative neurological disease — in nearly all deceased players examined.

The mainstream media converged towards numerical consensus.

Fox News reported players in a study had CTE.”
CNN reframed the headline, “CTE found …
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Are CTE headlines overblown? A radiologist investigates.

Being a resident and a parent is hard when your child gets sick

Adam D. Langenfeld, MD , PhD

Physician

September 6, 2017

One of the most difficult situations for a parent is one in which your child is sick. To be in a situation where you cannot control how the child responds to interventions is very challenging. Under normal circumstances, you follow your normal daily routine: up in the morning, breakfast, get dressed, off to school or daycare or activities for the day, a nap in the afternoon, pick up from school …

New technology might help us become more empathetic to others’ suffering

Shirie Leng, MD

Health Technology

September 6, 2017

Tele-empathy is not being empathetic over the phone. It is not crying in the sad parts of your favorite TV show. It is not beaming empathetic thoughts magically across time and space. No, tele-empathy is a technology. I should rather say, it’s a group of technologies recently being created to increase the empathy of health care providers. “This is rich,” you might say coming from an industry that brought us …

After 8 years, this doctor is finally treating his pancreatic tumors

Mark A. Lewis, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 6, 2017

I’ve known that I’ve had tumors in my pancreas since 2009. Until now I’ve done nothing about them.

This might sound like a counter-intuitive, even foolhardy strategy, especially for an oncologist, who should surely know better than to let his disease gain an advantage through his own inaction. But I don’t have the “usual” type of pancreatic cancer, the kind that claimed the life of Patrick Swayze and has sentenced …

The surprising way that architecture and the art of healing intersect

Betty Yibrehu, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 6, 2017

Cold, sterile and well … clinical. Three words that neatly describe hospitals as many of us know them. In books, on TV and in movies, we see and experience hospitals as impersonal, solemn and sterile institutions — designed only to treat disease.

Interestingly enough, while our society has begun shifting away from thinking of health as just the treatment of disease, our hospitals fail to reflect these changes. This is particularly …

3 unconscious things you might be doing that affect your patients

Nisha Cooch, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

September 6, 2017

Patient psychology is increasingly recognized as an important contributor to health outcomes. What patients believe about their health and their providers can significantly affect their initiative and their adherence.

It is important to recognize that factors that appear to be unrelated to medical care can influence feelings about that care, as well as outcomes. The reason this occurs is that the brain is not designed to parse out each element of …

Your patient is angry. Here are 5 things physicians can do.

Suneel Dhand, MD

Physician

September 5, 2017

It’s a scenario that every doctor is familiar with. You are having a busy day and working full steam to get everyone better. You suddenly receive that unexpected message: “Mr. Johnson and his family are very upset and would like to speak with you now.”

Most of the time, any physician’s initial reaction will be one of irritation, disappointment or frustration: “My goodness, I’m working so hard here, and we have …

A way to stop social isolation? Beer.

Sarah Fraser, MD

Physician

September 5, 2017

On our first night in Dublin, my mother and I head straight to a pub. We sit at a table across the room from a cheerful woman who looks to be in her eighties. It doesn’t take her long to walk across the room and join us. She grasps her pint of beer and takes a long gulp. We learn that her name is Mary and she welcomes us with …

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A way to stop social isolation? Beer.

Medical device companies will soon face hard audits

Peter F. Nichol, MD, PhD

Physician

September 5, 2017

Approximately 18 months ago, I was asked to serve as the surgical director for operating room (OR) services at our children’s hospital. The opportunity has been an eye-opening experience in understanding how a hospital functions.

ORs are like the economic engine room in a large ocean-going vessel. Without them functioning optimally, the boat stops moving, and is batted about by of waves economic disruption. If surgical admissions drop below a certain …

Gamification of medical education: Choose Your Own Medventure

Chris Carroll, MD

Medical Education

September 5, 2017

More and more health care practitioners are turning to social media for their medical education. Fellows are learning ultrasound from Snapchat, nurses are learning how to insert NG tubes from watching YouTube, and learners are learning pathophysiology from blogs and podcasts. To reach this audience with credible and reliable content, it is important for medical educators to be present where the learners are, and that means social media.

Users are also …

Physician, heal thyself. With help.

Manish Naik, MD

Physician

September 4, 2017

Doctors see firsthand the toll that today’s increasingly stressful society takes on patients: Engineers, office managers, teachers, you name it.

Work demands have increased, as has multitasking. Pressures outside the workplace add additional stress. Often, parents chauffeuring children to multiple activities must also care for aging parents with increasing needs. Electronic devices, always in hand or close by, command our attention (due to work or personal needs, sometimes simultaneously). Finding a …

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Physician, heal thyself. With help.

Don’t call it universal without including abortion coverage

Vidya Visvabharathy

Health Policy

September 4, 2017

As Sen. Bernie Sanders prepares to introduce a universal health care bill in the next few weeks, many progressives who support a universal single-payer program worry about its effects on abortion access. Can we win Medicare-for-all while protecting hard-won reproductive rights? As a woman of color, a reproductive rights advocate, and graduate student of public health, I recognize the importance for marginalized groups to stand in solidarity for …

When medical training stresses you: Write it out

Michael McNeil, MD

Medical Education

September 4, 2017

I don’t think I would be the first resident to claim that residency is hard. Anyone who has gone through, or is currently participating in residency, will attest to the challenge of medical training. Efforts have been made on national and institutional levels to address this with work hour restrictions limiting the number of hours a resident can work or the number of calls a trainee can take. These rules …

The hidden crisis within the health care crisis

Todd J. Albert, MD

Physician

September 4, 2017

My first year after completing surgical residency was an exhilarating and exhausting experience that most physicians will recall as part of their training. The American medical culture has imagined that the nation’s doctors — no matter their workload — simply don’t reach physical or emotional exhaustion in their work. But they do, and as we debate the future of healthcare in our country, we need to address this problem and quickly get to solutions, …

A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America

W. Ryan Neuhofel, DO, MPH

Health Policy

September 4, 2017

An executive summary of “A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America.”

The political theater over health care reform has quieted after yet another ugly show. A productive dialogue about big ideas seems impossible in our hyper-partisan climate. No matter which party holds power, any significant proposal is quickly met with fierce opposition from a variety of political and business interests.

So, for many decades, America has …

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