A nurse innovator is a nurse who specializes in bringing forth positive change in health care quality and equity by addressing the unmet needs of a target population through new products, processes, and services. Innovators have existed throughout the history of nursing which dates to the 19th century. Yet, the formalization of a ‘nurse innovator’ role has only begun to emerge within health care organizations across the U.S. over the …
Research shows that early intervention in mental health conditions is critical for achieving better outcomes. Left unaddressed, conditions tend to progress. The depression will worsen. The anxiety will escalate. The disorder can intensify to the point where a child or teen can’t function, won’t get out of bed, may start self-medicating – and the list goes on.
Even though it could change the trajectory of an adolescents’ mental health condition, providers …
The current COVID pandemic has brought into stark contrast the woeful state of medical data collection and data sharing in the United States. It has been a central goal of Health and Human Services (HHS) to at first encourage and later mandate sharing clinical data across multiple electronic health records. Unfortunately, progress has been slow and actual clinically useful widespread adoption of shared medical data remains an aspiration. Here, we …
Fun fact: The first recorded use of electric stimulation to ease pain was in … get ready … CE 46! That’s right, nearly 2,000 years ago, ancient Roman writer Scribonius Largus described the use of torpedo fish, aquatic animals capable of electrical discharge, to heal. This system is still as common in health care settings as a conventional TENS Unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation). Similarly, many health care IT innovations …
Hidden in the epigastric region of the abdomen concealed by a curtain of peritoneum is a moody, often forgettable little organ. Of course, the term organ is a somewhat generous description for this rather overqualified gland. The pancreas has its own set of rules as it mischievously lurks behind the stomach waiting for its cue for chaos.
In a moment of theatrical exaggeration, it can go from completely forgettable to a …
Is your health care organization reeling from a bad EHR implementation?
There have been rumblings from hospital leadership and congressional committees about the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospitals’ implementation of the Cerner Corporation electronic health record (EHR) replacing the VistA EHR. The $10 million EHR overhaul has been controversial since the staggered rollout started in Spokane, Washington. One report noted that months after the go-live, fewer users knew how to operate the …
Earlier this year, a federal rule that requires clinical information such as doctors’ notes and lab and imaging results to be made immediately available to patients took effect. A little more than three months out from implementation, there are mixed reviews as to how well the so-called “Open Notes” rule is actually improving patient care.
Patient advocates and even many physicians have supported the concept of electronic health information …
Nurses are an essential component of the American health care system and are continually in high demand nationwide. For years, nurses have elected to leave the field or have sought alternative professions instead of working in a traditional nursing role full-time. The pandemic brought into focus the need for work-life balance across professions. Whether strained from high-stress levels, financial upset, demanding hours or an overwhelming workload, nursing …
Medtech companies realize that it’s not a trivial task to get a surgeon to just start using a new device. Surgeons have a great deal of responsibility, and their job involves learning a lot of techniques. Therefore, when surgeons learn a technique and master it over the course of years and decades, it will take a lot of convincing to get them to switch to a new one.
But technological progress …
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the vital roles effective communication and reliable technology play in the patient journey, starting from the moment a patient is on the way to the emergency department (ED) through to discharge. There are many moving parts during an ED visit, and the process of keeping the patient, their family, and other departments within the hospital or health system informed is no small feat …
Being an internist, the day is filled with problem-solving. The problems are often not straightforward and require thinking, rethinking, reevaluating, and reading up and researching before the problem can be solved. However, when a sixth sense, an intuition kicks in that warns us that something needs to be addressed urgently even when we cannot specify or articulate why.
Once I had a patient come in for shortness of breath that is …
If you’re not intricately involved daily with SEO, let me explain what happened in May 2020 and why it will be a huge boost for content created by physicians.
First, what is SEO? In short, it is the process of optimizing content found online in order to help it be seen by those searching for the information found in that content. It used to be that people would just stuff their …
I have written, or more accurately ranted, about electronic medical records (EMR) systems throughout this blog. While the systems have clearly improved since their mandatory introduction into the medical universe, they have still not delivered on many of their promises.
Of course, EMR has brought tremendous advantages to the medical profession, and we are all grateful for the technology. But this progress has exacted a cost. Many of them are clumsy …
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An excerpt from Scope Forward: The Future of Gastroenterology Is Now in Your Hands.
Over a decade ago, many of us still used landline phones, watched cable TV, rented DVDs, called for taxis, took photos using cameras, and drove over to Borders to browse and buy books. …
When we think about holistic medicine, many assume that it requires human-to-human touch points and, therefore, doesn’t lend itself well to technology and innovations such as artificial intelligence. In fact, holistic medicine and whole-person care advocates often view technology as manufactured or impersonal and therefore dismiss its utility for health care. This is because there is a perception that health care tech values the human experience only for the purpose …
What if I told you just a few years ago that Amazon — a budding e-commerce startup — would come to disrupt the multi-billion dollar retail industry.
I seriously doubt that anyone could have given it a serious thought. At least not in the magnitude that will force a slew of big-box retailers to shut their doors for good.
I am sure the same response would have been elicited about Uber and …
I recently spoke with a colleague who transitioned out of the military in the last year. He was previously excited about his new job opportunity, but now a year later, he tells me, “I hate civilian medicine.”
I was surprised because he had been excited about the opportunity to teach in a residency program again. He said, “I love teaching, and I love the residents. …
During one long ago very hot Washington, DC summer, at the suggestion of my parents, I enrolled in a typing course that was given at our elementary school.
This was the summer between sixth and seventh grades, and there were lots of things I would’ve preferred to have been doing, but my dad, who started out in advertising, felt that touch-typing …
The storage capacity of the human mind is amazing. One estimate of the size of the brain’s “RAM” is as high as 2.5 petabytes (a million gigabytes). The number is based on the total number of neurons in the brain and the total number of possible connections per neuron. I suspect it is an overestimate, given the vagaries and innate inefficiency of biological systems. Nevertheless, the true figure …
Today was like no other day. It was our first day together.
Me and my “virtual” scribe — an actual person who seems to “virtually” to exist inside of a Jabra speaker on my desk and so subtlety that I forgot to mute a few times when not seeing patients. The “man” in the Jabra speaker now knows just how long of an appointment I need for my hair, and that …
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