Wednesday, December 1st was World AIDS Day — a day to raise awareness for the ongoing AIDS pandemic around the world and to remember the past. As a trainee intern I spent 3 months in Zambia, a time that really opened my eyes up to what AIDS was doing to the world. Much has changed since then, antivirals have arrived in Zambia for instance, yet the disaster continues: 1 in …
by Nicholas J. Rohrhoff
Each generation of physicians has no choice but to take on the responsibility of learning the science of medicine – how best to care for patients. But current circumstances dictate that we must also bear the burden of developing policy that creates the best system in which to provide that care.
Creation of a 21st century American healthcare system will require engagement and …
If you’re in medicine, you’re in politics
Both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPAC), as well as the stimulus bill from last year included funding, which focused on the use of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health records (EHRs). These initiatives are aimed at getting health care providers and entities to begin using information technology to improve the quality, efficiency, and delivery of care to patients.
Along the same lines as using HIT, a recent article …
Why the CME community is lacking in its use of social media
by Diana E. Lee
Some are free, others are not, but there are some great, off the beaten path apps on this list that are well worth downloading to your iPhone.
1. iHeadache (free version, with ads).This app isn’t bad, but I did find some features less than ideal. You’re limited to their list of symptoms, which may not include all of your symptoms. It didn’t include all of mine, …
iPhone medical apps for patients with migraine headaches
by Lorelei Armstrong
Doctors debate whether patients Googling symptoms is a good thing or a bad thing. I bet you haven’t thought about something that might be worse: your teenage patients are answering one another’s medical questions on Yahoo! Answers.
They’re not always clear on anatomy and terminology: “How can I tell if I’m circumcised?” and “What’s the best way to shave my vagina?” and “Where is the female prostate located?”
They are …
Teenage patients are answering medical questions on Yahoo! Answers
Six months down. Six to go. I am officially halfway through what people have told me will be one of the most challenging years of my life. I’ve rotated through Cardiology, Primary Care, Gastroenterology, General Medicine, Psychiatry, Palliative Medicine, the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU), and Rheumatology. Finally I have reached every resident’s favorite rotation – vacation.
Intern year has been hard work, but I’ve enjoyed it and am extremely pleased …
Combat compassion fatigue in caregivers to improve patient care
I saw two patients recently that really made me scratch my head.
The first was a 15-year-old girl who was smoking a pack of cigarettes daily and had been for 3 years; the other was a 26-year-old man who smoked 1.5 packs daily for 10 years and had recurrent oral ulcers and bleeding gums. In sitting and talking with these two patients, it became blatantly obvious that the risks of tobacco …
Discussing smoking habits with patients
The non-profit media organization ProPublica last year announced a new website/database called Dollars for Docs. It lists cash payments made to 17,000 U.S. doctors by seven large drug companies.
I’ve been browsing through the database and I have some thoughts about its strengths and weaknesses—and how it might be useful for patients.
First, here’s what these journalists did. Rather than waiting for the provisions of the Physician’s Payments Sunshine Act …
ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs: Strengths and weaknesses
I didn’t always recognize its importance. I mean when I was younger, I thought that being attractive, slim, athletic, articulate were sure-fire antidotes to one’s suffering a life of mediocrity. I just never recognized the value of something I took for granted, my sense of humor. And then life happened.
When I was 36, my husband (who was older by 12 years) was diagnosed with lung cancer. Inoperable, incurable, his type …
Kernels of humor in a tragic cancer story
The role of stressful life events in suicide attempts and completed suicides has been a key area of study in the epidemiology of mental disorders. Although suicidal behavior often occurs in the context of acute and chronic stressor, this does not prove a causal link. We all could probably report serious life stressors throughout out lives and these could be interpreted as a reason for suicidal behavior. So these associations …
Stressful life events in suicide attempts and completed suicides
In the spring of 2005, the sinus infection returned. I awoke severely congested with a pounding forehead and pain around my eyes that grew worse when I bent to tie my shoes. The feeling was familiar. Two years earlier, I had similar symptoms, but was uninsured and endured a miserable week with nothing but over-the-counter medication. Now they were back.
Fortunately, when I started graduate school, my father insisted that I …
Finding out the cost of lab tests is a real challenge for patients
An excerpt from What Will Happen to Me?
by Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
Children need time to adjust to the separation caused by having a parent in prison. But it takes more than time. As we have heard in their voices, children also need to make sense of what has happened to them and to their parent or parents. Because of this, they have many …
10 questions asked by children whose parents are in prison
In a recent series of articles in the New York Times, Walt Bogdanich uncovered an alarming series of radiation treatment errors associated with implementation of new computerized treatment technologies such as Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT).
Based on this article, reporting hundreds of cases, some of them fatal, it appears that a variety of causes are associated with errors, including inadequate training of physicists and radiation therapists, difficulty physically validating computer-generated treatment …
Radiation treatment errors with Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
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There’s a great blog post on Harvard Business Review titled, “Does an Entrepreneur Need an MBA?” I’m now enrolled in business school and I’m pursuing an MBA. I don’t consider myself a traditional entrepreneur, but I’ve started a few things here and there. Someday, I may take a big risk and start a “real” company, but for now I’m comfortable bootstrapping my way through a few little ventures.
The …
Does a physician need an MBA degree?
by Peter J. Pitts
As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote isn’t data. That is unless the anecdote supports your theory. Here’s a personal anecdote — a story of how the system works.
Being adopted, I have no family history, so when I suffered through some late night chest pains I figured I’d better act on the warning signals. I called my GP and got a same-day consultation, resulting in a next-day referral …
A stent anecdote from a former FDA Associate Commissioner
by Zakari Tata, MD
Biomedical ethics and bedside communication is currently taught to medical students in a classroom mainly in the first two years. In residency it is not usually given a lot of attention. This is leading to a situation where a very basic part of daily patient interaction is not addressed. This leads to many complex problems in the hospital that lead to moral dilemmas and conflicts.
The idea needs …
Bioethics and bedside communication in daily patient interaction
Some research studies just contain too many revelations to not share with the world. The Health Affairs study on the pay gap between newly-trained male and female physicians is just such a study, demonstrating conclusively that:
1. The gender gap in physician salaries is not related to specialty choice or work hours. No matter where women are choosing to work (solo practice vs. hospital, city vs. rural), which specialty they choose …
Why is there a gender gap in physician salaries?
You’ve probably experienced that age-old ritual of cooling your heels in an ER waiting room hoping that it won’t be too many hours before a nurse lets you inside the sliding doors.
Simon Bradley tweeted this to my Twitter Account @WCBADoctorBrian: “My buddy had a deep laceration between the thumb and the index finger – a full layer of skin. Took 10 hours at (name of hospital withheld), fastest in town.”
A …
Can posting ER wait times be dangerous to patients?
Like many other parents of kids with allergies, I was very dismayed to see this article, titled, Allergic boy, 7, suffers two heart attacks after teacher hands him chocolate nut in class, last week. It seems a boy of 7 was accidentally given a chocolate candy containing a hazelnut, to which he is allergic. After biting into the candy, he realized immediately that he shouldn’t have it and …
Kids with allergies can die in school
Nutrition fascinates me – I’ve been studying it for over twenty years and have a university degree in Dietetics. These days I’m particularly interested in the secrets of high-performance eating; the busier and bigger my life gets, the more I need to be on the ball. Food is an essential part of my success strategy. Put another way: if I didn’t know how to eat right for my brain, I’d …
Food is an essential part of a doctor’s success strategy
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