Why the ophthalmologist and optometrist conflict should concern patients

Physician
May 10, 2011

If you need laser eye surgery in the state of Kentucky, or a little cosmetic work around the eyelids, it now behooves you to ask your prospective surgeon the following question before signing the operative consent form:

“Say doc, did you go to medical school?”

Kentucky joined the company of Oklahoma earlier this year as the second state to conflate optometrists and ophthalmologists. Only ophthalmologists are the sort of doctors who graduated …

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Physicians coping after a medical error

Physician
May 10, 2011

A failed treatment, a surgical complication, a medical error, a patient death. When the going gets tough, even the toughest clinicians should get help.

Physicians and nurses who feel personally responsible for a medical error or a patient’s injury face an immediate quandary—their next patient. In the midst of your angst and guilt, do you suck it up and soldier …

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How to use an iPad in the OR during surgery

Tech
May 9, 2011

by Felasfa Wodajo, MD

The iPad has received a significant amount of attention in the health care arena since its introduction last year.

The attraction is fairly obvious; it is a portable, lightweight, powerful computing device with an intui-tive interface and a large library of built-in applications. In fact, major medical schools such as Read more…

Recovery may be predicted with a perception of the inner pulse

Physician
May 6, 2011

An excerpt from The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code of Sickness and Health.

by Marc Siegel, MD

The Pulse of Recovery

People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
–Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The inner pulse can keep beating—loudly—long after doctors, researchers, and their monitors predict …

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Explaining why belief in pseudoscience is often evidence resistant

Conditions
May 4, 2011

What links belief in tarot cards, UFOs and vaccine rejectionism? Yes, they are all forms of superstitious or magical thinking, but are there characteristics that predict who will believe in such nonsense? That’s one of the questions that psychologists Marjaana Lindeman and Kia Aarnio seek to answer in their paper, Superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs: An integrative model.

Lindeman and Aarnio postulate that believers in superstition, paranormal phenomena and pseudoscience make …

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Should nurses be fired for fatal medication errors?

KevinMD
May 2, 2011

Kimberly Hiatt was a pediatric critical care nurse who accidentally gave an infant a fatal overdose of calcium chloride last year.

By accounts, it was a calculation error. A human mistake.

After the incident, the hospital fired her.

This past April, she took her own life.

Although it cannot be concluded that the tragedy was directly responsible for her suicide, the incident clearly …

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The war on pubic hair must end

Conditions
April 29, 2011

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I must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.

It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical.  The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their specialty services to those seeking the “clean and bare” look, …

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The exhaustion of emergency physicians, and its toll on patients and family

Physician
April 26, 2011

When I advise students about how to choose a specialty, I suggest that they seek out advice from physicians who are at least 10 years out of residency and leading the type of life they hope to have in the future.

It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to anticipate  in your late 20s or early 30s what practicing a certain specialty will be like when you are 40, 50, or 60.

Find …

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Using Google Translate in medicine

Tech
April 21, 2011

by Graham Walker, MD

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel Fish was a fish you stuck in your ear that allowed you to understand any language spoken to you. We’re not far off.

Google recently released a new version of their (free!) Google Translate app for Android phones, featuring conversation mode, which allows you to have a back and forth …

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Does being a disadvantaged applicant affect my medical school application?

Education
April 19, 2011

When applying to medical school, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) asks aspiring physicians if they would like to be considered “disadvantaged” applicants or not.

Many premedical students find themselves troubled by this question and wonder, what does it mean to be disadvantaged? How does being a disadvantaged applicant affect my medical school application? According to the information American Association of …

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How an ACO will affect physicians and Medicare patients

Policy
April 14, 2011

by Benjamin P. Geisler, MD, MPH

Everybody is talking about Accountable Care Organizations or ACOs these days.

The reason being that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS has released the rules for shared savings between ACOs and CMS.

The complete proposed rule is 429 pages long and they’re seeking comments on it now until early June.

What is an ACO?

ACOs will take care of …

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Physicians referring patients to a diagnostic facility they own

Policy
April 10, 2011

Federal law generally prohibits physicians from referring their own patients to a diagnostic facility in which they have an ownership issue – a practice called “self-referral” – unless the facility is located in their own practice.

This exemption exists to allow patients with access to a laboratory test, x-ray, or other imaging test at the same time and place as when patients are seeing their physician for an office visit. Less …

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