Football fans may want to engage in some relaxation techniques or anxiety management prior to the big game.
MedPage Today reports on a study where researchers looked at the 1980 Super Bowl, where the (then) Los Angeles Rams lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The game was "high-intensity, [where] the lead changed hands seven times. The game was played in nearby Pasadena, and the Rams had been in ...
April 2009
All Stories
Should general internal medicine merge with family practice?
The United States is the only country in the Western world that has 3 separate tracts for generalist medicine: pediatrics, internal medicine, and family practice.
Is it time for some consolidation? Prominent physician bloggers debate the issue over at Medscape.
There are significant differences between family practice and internal medicine training, but it boils down to the fact that internal medicine residents spend more time in ...
Can you understand the Patients’ Bill of Rights?
Consider that the average American reads at an eighth-grade reading level.
That's a problem when you consider how complicated and dense the actual Patients' Bill of Rights one typically receives at health care institutions.
There is no federal bill of rights, so the document's complexity can vary by state. A recent study showed that almost half of the states' bills required a level equivalent to two ...
How connected are you to a primary care doctor?
The good news is that most patients, 60 percent in fact, felt appropriately "connected" to their primary care physician.
However, that leaves a significant 40 percent who were not.
According to a recent study, patients who were not connected were less likely to received recommended preventive care and other screening tests.
Which all comes as no surprise. Not only is it increasingly difficult to find ...
Edwin Leap: Who pays when politicians commit malpractice?
My kids love to play Monopoly. They delight in acquiring properties, making money and crushing their siblings. They play with passion and savagery. That is, until recently. A couple of weeks ago I walked past the Monopoly board, spread on the floor between my children and their dear friend Tyler."˜How's it going guys?'"˜Great game, but we all ran out of money. So, we just put some more money on the ...
Medical schools are using Second Life to teach future doctors
Second Life is a "virtual" world where users act and communicate using avatars.
A medical school in the UK is experimenting with the platform, where "students [via their avatars] enter a patient's room and their work begins. Because their assignment takes place in a respiratory ward, they can access recordings of real-life patients' breathing to help with their diagnoses. And if students decide that X-rays are needed, they ...
Most hospitalists are good, but some, like these ones, aren’t
It's a well known phenomenon that hospitalists are taking over inpatient medicine.
And no wonder, the payment system strongly discourages newly minted doctors to practice outpatient medicine, and the demand that hospitals have for inpatient physicians is surging at an unprecedented rate.
It's a good time to be a hospitalist, but, as this reader writes to me, that may lead to an increasingly variability in the quality ...
Cash-only medicine doesn’t necessarily mean expensive care
Are cash-only medical practices only limited to the wealthy?
When you think about it, how much care does the average patient really need? Over at Better Health, Val Jones writes that 75 percent of patients require an average of 3.5 office visits annually for all the medical care they need. That works out to about 1 hour of a physician's time per year.
How much ...
An incredible surgery, but would future surgeons be able to accomplish the same feat?
You may have heard of the amazing story of Heather McNamara, and her surgeon, Tomoaki Kato.
She was the 7-year old who had to have six organs removed, in order to access a tumor that previous doctors had deemed inoperable.
The operation was a success, but the 23-hour procedure left Dr. Kato at the brink of exhaustion.
In fact, he said, "I am used to long ...
Kevin Pho, MD
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Why Priscilla Chan may become the country’s most influential doctor
Who has the potential to be the most influential physician of our generation? It's Priscilla Chan, who not only recently graduated from...
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Confused about prostate cancer screening? Make a shared decision
In a widely anticipated move, the USPSTF officially recommended against prostate cancer screening in healthy men. Case closed, right? Hardly. The prostate...
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When it comes to doctors and social media, hospitals fail miserably
When it comes to medicine and social media, much of the attention is negative. Doctors losing their hospital privileges because of Facebook....
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Warren Buffett’s prostate cancer choices aren’t right for every man
A version of this column was published on April 24, 2012 in USA Today. There has been a recent uptick of elderly men...
Physician
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Why test recalls should not be considered cheating
I was appalled recently by the coverage of radiology “test recalls” by CNN, amplified by Dr. Gary Becker of the American Board...
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Why physicians are susceptible to hardball tactics
I was invited to a medical staff leadership conference sponsored by our hospital. A company specializing in training physician leaders ran the...
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How we deliver bad news is critical to how families deal with grief
As a cardiac electrophysiologist, I have had to discuss bad news with patients and families more times than I would like during...
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His father’s suffering had already been too great
He looked dead. The paramedics brought him down the hall toward one of my critical care beds, and for a moment I...
Patient
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How death can be a beautiful experience
I was honored to be part of a beautiful experience in late January of 2011. It was the death of my mother-in-law...
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What meaningful encouragement can be given to someone who is dying?
Theirs is a lonely journey; to be moving towards the separation and end of all things known and loved. Being with a...
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Health care journalists have tendencies similar to those of doctors
As a patient who was asked to speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2012 conference, I felt a bit covert....
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Adaptation can be painful, but it can also be a gift
Nothing will force you to live life on your own terms faster than almost losing it. In 2008, I was on fire....
Policy
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What should America’s health care vision be?
America has this paradox of excellent biomedical science, innovative drug manufacturers and entrepreneurial device developers along with outstanding providers but at the...
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Hospitals around the world aim to remain relevant to patients
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." So begins a story called A Tale of Two...
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Repairing the tear in health care’s safety net with social media
The nation’s “safety net” hospitals are designed to ensure that uninsured, lower income and indigent populations receive adequate medical care – a...
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Look to technology to reduce health costs
Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but...
Tech
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When patient care becomes secondary to filling out the medical record
The policeman was two cars in front of me. I meandered down the road cautiously adjusting my speed a few ticks above...
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Doctors, use Google to get more patients in less than 7 minutes
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people look for a doctor on Google. As an amazing practitioner, your site deserves to be...
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The user interface for EHRs should be uniform
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the physician’s office were the tall cabinets filled with manila folders, tabbed with...
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EMR liability needs to go further than just the physician
This example of a disaster waiting to happen, in the form of an error-promoting CPOE, is a poster example of why the...
Social Media
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We need to see the potential harm of social media
Prior to 1794, farms across the world could only pick cotton as fast as humanly possible. In the late 18th century, Eli Whitney...
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Why social media may not be worth it for doctors
Social media in healthcare is all the rage these days. You can’t visit even one physician-oriented website without someone breathlessly advising you...
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Transparency defines social media success for doctors
Want to understand social media? Physicians wanting to learn about social media must learn transparency. We must learn transparency on a personal...
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How Twitter was used in a potential mass casualty scenario
It was my first ER shift in charge of the resuscitation area. Needless to say, my adrenaline and nerves were firing like...
