Patients and caregivers writing on KevinMD about illness and the health care system from the other side of the exam table: navigating care, the doctor-patient relationship, being heard, cost, and what patients want physicians to understand. Physicians who have become patients write here too. For the record of what pain patients and physicians have said to each other about opioids since 2007, with patient authors cited at the same weight as physicians, see Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words. For what patients pay and who is left out when physicians leave insurance, see Direct primary care: what physicians say, in their own words. For what patients, families, and physicians have said about dying, hospice, and the decisions families face, see End of life: what physicians say, in their own words. For what physicians and family caregivers have said about growing old, dementia, nursing homes, and caring for aging parents, see Aging and dementia: what physicians say, in their own words.
by Crystal Phend, MedPage Today Senior Staff Writer
Failure to account for background rates when considering adverse events from pandemic H1N1 flu vaccination could spark public panic, researchers cautioned.
Coincidental cases of dramatic events including sudden death, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and spontaneous abortion can be expected to boost the true incidence of adverse events after immunization, said Steven …
Physicians and plaintiff attorneys have philosophically divergent views on our tort system. I know the attorneys’ views on this issue well. There are lawyers in my family who have prosecuted physicians for alleged medical malpractice. Sometimes, there hasn’t been enough antacids in our house to douse my flaming heartburn after some of our discussions.
Obviously, one reason that lawyers support the current system is because it enriches them. …
What defines a “disease?” At what point does a collection of symptoms and causes make the transition from “condition” to disease? Is it when a consensus forms around a concrete, observable, and repeatable set of biochemical and/or physiological processes and outcomes? Surely there is little doubt that diabetes or hypertension qualify as a disease under the standard paradigm. …
by Michael Smith, MedPage Today North American Correspondent
Good hand hygiene among healthcare workers is an important factor in preventing the spread of disease, but exactly how important depends on an individual’s job, researchers said.
In a mathematical model, so-called “peripatetic” workers — such as therapists or radiologists — were most likely to spread pathogens if they …
In 2001, when my colleagues and I ranked nearly 100 patient safety practices on the strength of their supporting evidence (for an AHRQ report), healthcare IT didn’t make the top 25. We took a lot of heat for, as one prominent patient safety advocate chided me, “slowing down the momentum.” Some called us Luddites.
Although we hated to be skunks at the IT party, we felt that the facts spoke for …
I would like to introduce you a remarkable article by Edward J. Volpintesta, MD, a 65-year old solo primary care doctor in Bethel, Connecticut. Dr. Volpintesta is a veritable writing machine and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, medical journals, and other publications. His articles cry for a deeper understanding of primary care dilemmas.
In the October issue of Connecticut Medicine, Dr. Volpintesta hits the …
Opportunities to learn how to perform skin cancer examinations during medical training are inadequate, a survey of residents found.
More than half (55.3%) of residents said that they had never observed a skin cancer examination, 75.8% said they’d never been taught to perform one, and 57.4% had never practiced doing …
by Crystal Phend, MedPage Today Senior Staff Writer
The pandemic H1N1 influenza virus continues to disproportionately attack the young, the CDC warned.
Children and adults under age 25 have accounted for 53% of hospitalizations for laboratory-confirmed H1N1 and 23.6% of related deaths since Sept. 1, the agency reported at a press briefing.
Seniors, on the other hand, have accounted for just 7% of …
We are very fortunate to have a number of newer insulins available for our patients.
For years we had animal insulins only. NPH and Regular, then we had Ultralente. The development of analog insulins marked the upswing in technology that we would sustain for a period of time. The most recent big blip in the …
by Michael Smith, MedPage Today North American Correspondent
President Barack Obama’s declaration that the H1N1 pandemic flu is a national emergency doesn’t mean the course of the outbreak has changed, health experts said.
But as the volume of cases increases, the declaration allows doctors and hospitals more flexibility in handling the expected surge in patients, they said.
I think by now there is not a person in the US who cannot quote at least approximately how much we spend annually on healthcare. Fewer people appreciate that nearly 1/3 of this $2.2 trillion bill is eaten by hospitalizations, amounting to about $680 billion. Although the data in the diagram below represent a single year, the overall distribution of expenses is remarkably constant over time.
Does anyone realize that the chaos of modern American health-care is not a tragedy, but a triumph? We’re so busy trying to fix what isn’t broken and ignoring what is, so busy casting stones and casting doubts that we are blind to what we have.
I have practiced medicine in this labyrinth for 16 years. I am an emergency physician. I practice in what may be considered the ‘epicenter’ of modern …
Doctors are often compelled to make quick decisions in life threatening cases with only limited information. Unfortunately, pregnant women are now going to be put in the same situation.
The H1N1 flu has taken an extraordinary toll among pregnant women. A new vaccine is now available. Because of the nature of the emergency, there has not been time to do any long term studies of the vaccine. Yet pregnant women will …
I’ve been practicing my health care specialty for sixty years and have enjoyed almost every minute of it. The minutes I have not enjoyed all have to do with “money.”
Financial transactions in doctors’ offices are the root of most evils in the relationship between doctor and patient. Along with that evil goes an additional detraction from good, humane health care called the fee-for-service system, which …
by Emily P. Walker, MedPage Today Washington Correspondent
If parents refuse to vaccinate their children, it’s ethical and legal to dismiss the child as a patient, a pediatrician told attendees of the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting here.
“In the middle of treatment, you can’t just say, I’m done,” Gary Marshall, MD, of the University of Louisville …
by Crystal Phend, MedPage Today Senior Staff Writer
Reports of stroke patients who were accidentally exposed to eight times the normal radiation dose during diagnostic CT scans at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are prompting safety warnings and soul searching among radiologists nationwide.
Over an 18-month period, 206 patients at the center received 3 to 4 …
Verizon, Motorola, and Google, along with 9 other cell phone manufactures and countless world carriers, have teamed up to provide a smartphone with the power to deliver useful applications for medicine: the Verizon “Droid” smartphone, based on the Google Android operating system (OS).
The Droid’s processor is the same processor that powers the iPhone. The main reasons this …
Just over half — 54% — of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases in southwest England occurred when the baby was co-sleeping in the same bed as a parent, a case-control study showed.
That compares with 20% of infants among randomly selected families and controls deemed to be at high …
If you want to get insights into the problems of our health care system, look at a mural by Washington DC resident Regina Holliday.
Holliday is a 37-year old mother of two and an art teacher. Last summer, her husband, Fred, died from kidney cancer at the age of 39. The Hollidays’ experience is a case study in …
Men who opt for minimally invasive prostate surgery — often with a helping hand from a robot — are twice as likely to have genitourinary complications as men who have a traditional prostatectomy.
That finding is especially troubling because the use of robotic-assisted minimally invasive prostatectomy has increased exponentially in …
Failure to account for background rates when considering adverse events from pandemic H1N1 flu vaccination could spark public panic, researchers cautioned.
The Droid’s processor is the same processor that powers the iPhone. The main reasons this …
