MKSAP: 59-year-old woman with pain of the right foot

Conditions
October 4, 2014

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.

A 59-year-old woman is evaluated for a 1-week history of increasing pain of the right foot. She recalls stepping on a nail about 1 month before her symptoms began. The patient has a 5-year history of heart failure secondary to idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. She has an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, and her current medications …

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7 common reasons for refusing vaccines

Meds
October 3, 2014

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that between January 1 and May 23 of this year, there were 288 cases of measles reported in the US. That’s more than the total number of cases in any year since 2000, when measles was eliminated in the U.S..

We have got to get more people immunized.

Essentially all of the cases were linked to “importations,” cases brought in from other countries …

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There is something very special about being a physician

Physician
October 2, 2014

Pretty much on a weekly basis I come across an article about how awful life is as a practicing physician. Articles focus on how unhappy physicians are with their jobs, with their hours, with their pay or with health care reform.

After almost a decade of practice, the fact is that I like my job.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not: quite far from it, in fact. There are certainly many times when …

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The ALS ice bucket challenge: Analysis of why it went viral

Social media
September 30, 2014

The ALS ice bucket challenge, better known as #ALSIceBucketChallenge or #icebucketchallenge, was almost the perfect storm for viral fundraising. In my course, Designing Health Campaigns Using Social Media at Tufts University, we analyzed why the challenge went viral.

Not surprisingly, given its popularity, my students had all heard about it and watched challenge videos. About half had done it. Some researched amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and …

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When your child doesn’t poop: Solving the constipation death spiral

Conditions
September 27, 2014

Michelle wrote in: “We trained my 3-year-old son approximately 3 months ago, and it’s been great. He’s been having virtually no accidents. The problem is that he’s terrified of making ‘dirty’ on the toilet. He does it in his pamper at night when he’s sleeping. He’s very verbal about it, and tells me that he’s scared to let the dirty come out. It’s really difficult to deal with because there …

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Emergency room doctors can safely use bedside ultrasound

Physician
September 27, 2014

I have been following the progress of bedside ultrasound (using ultrasound as a diagnostic tool during my physical exam of patients) as it gets a foothold in standard medical practice since I first started learning to do it about 3 years ago. Every so often a study comes out which warms my heart as it proves that less (radiation, expense) is more in treating patients.

An article came out in the …

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Vulnerability is a virtue in medicine

Education
September 26, 2014

Medical students are repeatedly taught the importance of the physician-patient relationship.  We are told that to be a good doctor we must strive to exhibit compassion, empathy, respect, professionalism and confidence all while applying our medical knowledge to figure out a diagnosis and treatment plan. If you add in the pressure of doing this within a 15-minute visit, all while answering questions faster than an Internet search, it can get …

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How hospitals discourage doctors: A step by step guide

Physician
September 26, 2014

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Not accustomed to visiting hospital executive suites, I took my seat in the waiting room somewhat warily.

Seated across from me was a handsome man in a well-tailored three-piece suit, whose thoroughly professional appearance made me — in my rumpled white coat, sheaves of dog-eared paper bulging from both pockets — feel out of place.

Within a minute, an administrative secretary came out and …

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An insider guide to reading your radiology report

Conditions
September 26, 2014

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The simple truth is that radiology reports can be hard to read, especially for those without a medical background.  The combination of advanced medical technology and the wonderful subtle intricacies of the human body often result in a final document that more closely resembles a William Faulkner novel (translation: difficult to understand!) than Dr. Seuss.  The goal is to try to …

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Health care fails to adopt technology. Here are 5 reasons why.

Tech
September 25, 2014

Why do so many seemingly great technologies fail to penetrate the health care system?

I hope the following five answers shed some light on the realities of technology adoption in health care.

1. Many new technologies don’t address the real problem

Tech entrepreneurs often take a backward approach to invention. They start by discovering a nifty technology. Later, they figure out how people can use it.

This technique often teaches entrepreneurs a tough lesson: Technology …

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A twisted argument against end-of-life care

Physician
September 25, 2014

“All your patients will die. Maybe not today, but someday.  The defining fact of life is that it ends.  Only a fool would dedicate their career to fighting something that can never be beaten.  Therefore, a doctor’s task cannot be to fight death.  A doctor’s task is to heal when possible and prevent suffering always. Our calling is to support life. Fighting death may deprive patients of the opportunity to …

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“I want to give up my son”: Is that child abuse?

Physician
September 24, 2014

The case

A thirty-five-year-old female presents to the emergency department on a weekend afternoon with the following chief complaint: “I want to give up custody of my son.”

The patient is well dressed — and so is her four-year-old son, who is sitting comfortably on the bed playing a video game on his mother’s cell phone.

According to the patient, she is a single mother with no support system. Her son’s father deserted …

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How do you know when a hypochondriac is really sick?

Physician
September 22, 2014

I have a patient who is a full blown sufferer of health anxiety. He firmly believes he has full-blown AIDS after a single extramarital sexual contact (non-genital) one month prior with a woman not known to have HIV. (Reality check: The other person didn’t have HIV, the specific contact as described was ridiculously unlikely to have transmitted the virus had it been present, and AIDS takes months to years to develop …

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Deactivating a pacemaker: Is it euthanasia?

Conditions
September 18, 2014

“He’d feel okay about not replacing the pacemaker’s battery when it ran down, he said. But turning it off, he said, would be ‘too active.’ Later he would tell me that it would have been “like putting a pillow over your father’s head.”

These are the words of Katy Butler in her book Knocking on Heaven’s Door – The Path to a Better Way of Death in which she writes about her …

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Abortion or ectopic pregnancy? When politicians confuse medical terms.

Conditions
September 17, 2014

Wendy Davis, gubernatorial candidate for Texas, has a new memoir Forgetting to Be Afraid. In it she describes terminating two pregnancies. One termination appears to have been in the second trimester for fetal indications and the other she describes as an ectopic pregnancy. She writes, “The only medical option was to have surgery to terminate the pregnancy and remove the affected fallopian tube — which …

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The worst-case scenario: When patient satisfaction goes too far

Physician
September 15, 2014

Everyone involved in health care, and particularly hospital care, has witnessed a sea change over the last decade. Things that were never even thought about, let alone formally taught to frontline doctors and nurses, have now come to the forefront.

Chief among these is the drive towards improving patient satisfaction and delivering a more optimal hospital experience. True, a large part of this is due to federal incentives and tying reimbursements …

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5 things people get wrong about Canada’s health system

Policy
September 14, 2014

The Canadian health care system is often held up as an example to model or to avoid at all costs in the debates on health care in America, and elsewhere.  Yet there are a startling number of misconceptions — on both sides of the partisan divide — about how the Canadian health system actually works, often from experts who should know better.  Here are the facts.

1. Doctors are self-employed, not …

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