Women’s health

869 articles · Since 2011

Articles, page 25

The drama of a C-section: It takes a team

April 12, 2018Apr 12, 20182

She pushes her cleaning cart into the bright room. “Looks like the usual mess,” she mumbles to herself, pushing a loose piece of hair back into her blue cap. Methodically, she cleans the room beginning with the operating table, stripping off the bloody sheets. Then cleaning the floor of blood-stained shoe prints, amniotic fluid and bits of paper, needle caps and such, that managed to escape hands and land on …

Physician voices

Are there too many female OB/GYNs?

Jennifer Gunter, MD

March 29, 2018Mar 29, 20187

The Los Angeles Times recently published a piece on the lack of men in OB/GYN. Only 17% of new trainees (residents) in OB/GYN are men and the male OB/GYN physicians who weighed in worried that this “lack of diversity could weaken the field.” Apparently, it sends a “horrible message to men,” and with the lack of men we might “lose the next person who is going to find a cure …

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Are there too many female OB/GYNs?

Physician voices

An emergency physician delivers a baby, and realizes that it isn’t for him

Edwin Leap, MD

March 27, 2018Mar 27, 20182

I’m an emergency physician. In common parlance, an ER doc. Which means, like a little kid who will eat dirt on a dare, there’s not much I won’t try in the practice of my profession. Many of my colleagues have had far more challenging careers than me, I assure you. But I have some stories to tell. Cyanide overdose while moonlighting as a resident. Patient nearly dying from bite by …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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Conditions and diseases

Science and medicine are seemingly at constant odds

Steven Zhang, MD

March 19, 2018Mar 19, 20182

In the mid-1800s, Ignaz Semmelweis, then a professor at Johns Hopkins, proposed something outrageous: Doctors and medical students working in the maternity ward should wash their hands before delivering babies because doing so could reduce infant mortality. For proof, he performed a rigorous experiment that showed babies delivered by midwives, who traditionally did wash their hands prior to deliveries, had rate of death that was five-fold lower than those delivered by doctors.

He …

Physician voices

Medicine systematically disadvantages women physicians at every stage of their careers

Elisabeth Poorman, MD

March 5, 2018Mar 5, 20189

When my friend was in her fourth year of medical school, she and her boyfriend sat down with their dean to discuss their residency applications. Both have since gone on to have successful academic medicine careers, but on that day…

“I’m sure it will all work out,” she recalled the dean saying. “After all, in 20 years …

Medical education

Physicians don’t know everything, and that’s OK

Kristin Puhl, MD

February 27, 2018Feb 27, 20183

Physicians face a host of challenges in practice, but the one that looms largest is often this — they don't know everything. It would be tempting to think that they do. As patients, we want them to. We want our…

Physicians face a host of challenges in practice, but the one that looms largest is often this — they don’t know everything.

It would be tempting to think that they do. As patients, we want them to. We want our doctors to tell us that they know what’s wrong and how to fix it. Medical mysteries are fun on television, but in our real lives, they’re profoundly unsettling and can have …

Conditions and diseases

MKSAP: 26-year-old woman with a mechanical mitral valve prosthesis

mksap

February 24, 2018Feb 24, 2018

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 26-year-old woman with a mechanical mitral valve prosthesis visits to discuss anticoagulation management during pregnancy. Her last menstrual period was 6 weeks ago…

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

A 26-year-old woman with a mechanical mitral valve prosthesis visits to discuss anticoagulation management during pregnancy. Her last menstrual period was 6 weeks ago and her pregnancy was confirmed by laboratory testing in the office. Her mitral valve was replaced 5 years ago. Her medications are low-dose aspirin, metoprolol, and warfarin (4 mg/d).

On …

Physician voices

A physician’s life as an FBI informant

Claire Grove, MD

February 21, 2018Feb 21, 2018

“Where is Saipan?” I typed into Google to search for this little U.S. territory island in the Western Pacific when I was told about a need for an OB/GYN in 2016. Next, I inquired to the private physician looking to…

“Where is Saipan?” I typed into Google to search for this little U.S. territory island in the Western Pacific when I was told about a need for an OB/GYN in 2016.

Next, I inquired to the private physician looking to expand his practice, “Do you really have a significant volume to support another doctor?” My vision of island medicine was that there were a smaller number of births due to a …

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A physician’s life as an FBI informant

Social media in medicine

An ultrasound posted on Instagram. Does a physician have a duty to warn?

Casey Humbyrd, MD & Kavita Shah Arora, MD

February 14, 2018Feb 14, 2018

Early this month, Joanna Gaines, co-host of HGTV’s popular Fixer Upper, shared her pregnancy news with the world via a baby bump photo and an ultrasound, both posted to Instagram. The congratulations began pouring in from excited fans. But the…

…

Physician voices

A system to identify doctors who’ve been working too many hours

Valerie A. Jones, MD

February 12, 2018Feb 12, 201812

My shift had finally ended. As a second-year resident, I was driving home after 30 hours awake straight. The busy call included delivering several babies, two Cesarean sections, circumcisions, rounding, triaging new patients, and teaching medical students. Never during that…

I couldn’t wait to get home at the end of the shift as I was completely exhausted. So, …

Physician voices

On mountains and miscarriage: a physician’s story of loss

Meredith Bourne, MD

February 2, 2018Feb 2, 2018

I feel the mountain in my bones. The methodical plodding of feet over uneven terrain, a meditation, the grace of a single forward path, with no decisions, no guilt or what-ifs, no fear. Just forward movement, forward momentum. I hear Mary Oliver’s words at my core: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention … how to be idle and blessed.” It’s taken …

Physician voices

Vital signs only tell you so much about a patient

Joe Andrie, MD

January 12, 2018Jan 12, 2018

It's another day for me as an intern on the labor-and-delivery floor of my large urban hospital — another day scrambling to help pregnant women deliver and trying to keep pace with the unpredictable timetable of the birthing process. My…

It’s another day for me as an intern on the labor-and-delivery floor of my large urban hospital — another day scrambling to help pregnant women deliver and trying to keep pace with the unpredictable timetable of the birthing process.

My hospital phone rings. I’m really starting to dread that sound.

It’s the triage nurse. We’re admitting a patient: Mrs. Harris, age thirty-four, who’s had several prior deliveries and therefore carries the label …

Physician voices

#MeToo: “I think I was raped,” my patient said

Andrea Eisenberg, MD

January 12, 2018Jan 12, 201810

Recently, I watched the movie Iron Jawed Angels with my daughter for her high school literature class. It retells the story of the women’s suffrage movement in the early 1900s, highlighting what the suffragettes endured to fight for women’s right to vote. Many brave women were taunted and tortured, arrested while peacefully protesting and then brutally beaten in prison, and, for some, ostracized from their community, family, and friends. Incredibly, …

Conditions and diseases

What’s the latest on estrogen use in post-menopausal women?

Janice Boughton, MD

January 10, 2018Jan 10, 20183

Estrogen is a miracle drug for many women who experience the drenching sweats, sexual dysfunction and frustrating brain betrayals associated with entering menopause. It comes in expensive patches, less expensive pills or injections, as well as vaginal creams or rings.…

Estrogen is the main ingredient in most birth control pills and has been studied extensively in that …

Drugs and prescribing

It’s time to make oral contraceptives available without a prescription

Jeffrey A. Singer, MD

January 2, 2018Jan 2, 2018

At his recent confirmation hearing, Alex Azar, President Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, was grilled by senators who wanted to know where he stands on requiring employers to provide oral contraception coverage in their employee health…

Physician voices

Collaboration with hospitalists, rather than competition, improves patient care

Charles Jaynes, MD

December 31, 2017Dec 31, 2017

It’s been 21 years since Drs. Robert Wachter and Lee Goldman, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, first described a new delivery model called “hospitalists” – clinicians whose primary professional focus is the care of hospitalized patients. Since that time the healthcare system has seen rapid growth of hospitalist programs across a variety of specialties.

In the OB world, I have had the opportunity to …

Health policy

Stop criminalizing prenatal substance abuse

Jolene Kokroko

December 25, 2017Dec 25, 2017

In today’s health and political discussions, opioid abuse dominates the conversation despite being only part of our country’s substance use epidemic. Prenatal substance use remains an uncontrolled public health problem with high costs to women, children, and society. Part of…

Most prenatal substance use prevalence data comes from substance treatment programs and national self-report surveys, likely leading to …

Health technology

Telemedicine can increase access to medical abortions

Elizabeth Ly

December 20, 2017Dec 20, 20174

Telemedicine has created an environment where patient convenience paired with reduced costs and increased efficiencies have made a better health care experience for both patients and physicians. The technology might be able to improve rural health care systems by increasing…

Telemedicine has created an environment where patient convenience paired with reduced costs and increased efficiencies have made a better health care experience for both patients and physicians.

The technology might be able to improve rural health care systems by increasing access to patients who would otherwise have to travel long distances. Meaning those who would otherwise forego care due to difficulties with transportation, costs or time, could now receive care. For …

Health technology

Is there a future for robot-assisted surgery?

Peter F. Nichol, MD, PhD

December 12, 2017Dec 12, 2017

Recently, there was a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal regarding robot-assisted surgery. It reported the results of two articles published in JAMA that demonstrated that robotic-assisted surgery cost more and took longer without achieving superior results to laparoscopic…

With this, my LinkedIn account lit up. Here are several of the comments that came through:

“I’ve come to assume that robotic surgery is better …

Conditions and diseases

MKSAP: 22-year-old woman is evaluated for a flare of Crohn disease

mksap

December 9, 2017Dec 9, 2017

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 22-year-old woman is evaluated for a flare of Crohn disease. A colonoscopy performed 6 months ago showed moderate, patchy, left-sided colitis extending from…

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

A 22-year-old woman is evaluated for a flare of Crohn disease. A colonoscopy performed 6 months ago showed moderate, patchy, left-sided colitis extending from the descending colon to the splenic flexure. She responded to therapy with prednisone but declined maintenance therapy in advance of conceiving. She is now 12 weeks pregnant and …

Women’s health

Articles, page 25

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