Social media is changing how we communicate and how we define “relationship.” I was speaking to someone last week who said to me, “Social media isn’t coming it’s here!” He’s right.
And while many voices in our professional communities are wary about social media, I see positive opportunities at every turn. Here are just 5 ways social media will change …
How social media will change mental health care
by Jeffrey L. Cohen
Healthcare reform used to imply just regulatory change. As time marches on, it also implies market change. Most pundits agree that, whatever happens to the healthcare reform law, whether or not it is found to be unconstitutional, the healthcare business community is unleashed. Change is afoot!
If you follow my naysaying on the …
How primary care will play a central role with health care reform
by Chris Chen
Recently, I stood in the back of a boisterous, packed auditorium as each of our school’s fourth-years received their match letters and proudly announced in front of friends, family, and classmates where they would be headed for residency.
As peers enthusiastically cheered each other, significant …
Why medical students should be passionate about health reform
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and I could not fall back asleep. I had a moment of brilliance laying there in bed. I had discovered a new medical disorder, Wimpy Parent Syndrome (WPS).
For years I have been seeing it in clinical practice, but have been unable to put my finger on exactly what was taking place. Then the idea of WPS came to me and everything …
Wimpy Parent Syndrome, and allowing your child to get mad and cry
One of the topics I went to China to discuss was our medical school’s approach to teaching medical ethics.
At Wuhan University they have a first-year course, but I was told by both the school administrators and some of the students that the material is dry and not seen of immediate importance, so students often skip the class.
Here’s how …
Medical ethics at hospitals and medical schools in China
If you’re sick, you need people to empathize with you, right? Maybe not.
Empathy is one of those words with a wide variety of definitions, especially in academic settings.
From Wikipedia: “Empathy … cover[s] a broad spectrum, ranging from feeling a concern for other people that creates a desire to help them, experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions, knowing what the other person is …
I received a phone call from the Broward Sheriff’s Office Police Athletic League Youth Boxing Program asking if I would help them out and be the fight physician at their upcoming youth boxing tournament.
Their usual physician, a member of the Boxing Hall of Fame, had another commitment. However, he was willing to train me in advance and show me the ropes on the day of the event.
State law and the …
A boxing fight physician experience
There is a lot of buzz over the creation of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
An ACO is a network of health care providers and hospitals that collaboratively manage patient care and prospective budgets. Perhaps the biggest draw of ACOs is the potential to create innovative ways to improve quality and decrease costs. To …
Accountable Care Organizations and the need to innovate
Every major industry is now computerized with one glaring exception; health care delivery. Thirty years after Steve Jobs began selling personal computers out of his garage, far less than 50% of physician practices and hospitals have converted to any form of electronic medical record.
The vast majority of medical documentation is still done via paper and writing utensil just as it …
Why some EMR programmers think physicians are stupid
A reader recently wrote to me: “Brandon, in our area, we’ve seen a few retail clinics pop up. What can we do as a practice to let patients know that visiting retail clinics is not in their best interest?”
We had along discussion. So I put together a summary of our conversation. Below is a rundown, more of less, of what I …
How physician practices can compete with retail clinics
One of the “Crown Jewels” of the 2010 holiday movie season may be The King’s Speech. The film centers on Colin Firth, who plays King George VI of Britain, and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who helps the king deal with his stutter.
Born Albert Frederick Arthur George, the second son of King George V, he spent most of his early years out of the spotlight, which centered …
What is stuttering, how is it treated, and The King’s Speech
Recently, KevinMD.com picked up my post on empathy or should I say the lack of it. I received some engaging comments.
One comment in particular caught my attention.
The contributor for some reason equated “being empathetic” with “giving in” to patient requests presumably during routine office visits. Here’s a direct quote:
Give the patients what they want! Antibiotics are OK for colds. The patients want them. So …
Does empathy mean giving patients what they want?
I was talking to a young man who is starting medical school this fall. His tuition at one of South Carolina’s newer schools will be $40,000 per year. That’s admittedly on the high end. On the low end, it runs a paltry $33,000 per year.
And this is all after college, of course. He and others like him are taking out loans to the tune of $240,000 to pay for their …
Why medical education needs to be more affordable
ADVERTISEMENT
Pauline Chen had a post in the New York Times recently about surgical informed consent. Informed consent is an important part of the surgeon/patient communication transaction.
Surgeon reviews the proposed operation, the rationale behind it, and the possible complications. For example— a patient comes in with biliary colic. We describe the anatomy and pathology. We aver that surgical resection will lead to …
Implications of the surgical buy in when discussing informed consent
One of my Facebook updates on my private account was that I “have a love-hate relationship with interleukin-6. Yes, macrophages and T cells, I know you are doing your job, but how many proinflammatory cytokines does it really take to fight this thing? What’s that? Be grateful you guys are even working? Oh, all right. I’ll shut up and eat my soup now.”
Yes, I’ve been sick this week. It started …
Calling in sick serves as a reminder for compassion for this doctor
One of the top hits that comes up on the Oracle of Googlius for “astroturf” is for the original company, now renamed SYNLawn, but still proudly stating, “We invented synthetic grass,” which is what astroturf is. More recently, this already synthetic term has become a verb, as in “astroturfing.”
My favorite of all credible information sources on the web, Wikipedia, has this to say about it:
Astroturfing denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally …
How astroturfing disease affects patients
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
by John Tooker, MD, MBA, MACP
Last month, my KevinMD.com column introduced a concept paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Owens and colleagues titled High-Value, Cost-Conscious Health Care: Concepts for Clinicians to Evaluate the Benefits, Harms, and Costs of Medical Interventions. …
ACP: Benefits, harms, and quality in high value, cost conscious care
The results of the application of reductionism in modern biomedical research and practice has been nothing short of miraculous, but while wondrous for some things, reductionism alone is incomplete.
The basic premise of reductionism is that by breaking down (or “reducing”) complex biological or medical phenomena into their many parts, one is much more likely to understand a single cause and devise a cure.
Historically, the invention of the microscope, the defining …
Reductionism and daily medical practice
I went to needle exchange to hang out. You may be asking yourself what a soccer mom from the burbs is doing perched on a folding chair in the parking garage of 101 Grove on a dark November night, surrounded by syringes.
I was there as a guest observer because I’m working on a series of articles about mortality and homelessness, as part of an Annenberg California Health Journalism Fellowship I …
Overeating is not a surgical problem.
This may seem to be a statement of the obvious, but the solution to a behavioral problem is not surgery. Overeating is not a surgical problem — it is a behavioral one. The problem is not because the stomach is too big and needs to be made smaller. It is a function of how …
Overeating is a behavioral problem, not a surgical one
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
