What makes a great surgeon or doctor? Or for that matter, a great violinist? As many psychologists suggest (regardless of whether one is talking about sports, music, painting, astronomy, physics, etc), it entails:
by Dan ZenkaAs a patient, I feel for anyone who is given a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Hearing the "Big-C" word can be upsetting enough. But the complexity of the disease—diagnosing it, trying to characterize it and selecting the appropriate treatment—can feel like insult upon injury. We need to talk about prostate cancers. With 24 known sub-types of this cancer—from ...
As a consultant, I spend a lot of time on airplanes and subsequently get to meet a new "person in the next seat" almost every week. Once the small talk is over, the conversation is nearly the same every time. "Oh, you work in healthcare! What do you think about all of this reform stuff anyway? Is there an answer?" I’m always very cautious how I frame my answer. As those ...
I see a lot of patients who are sent to me for evaluation of dizziness. On the surface you wouldn’t think a cardiologist would have much to do with a symptom that relates more to the head than the heart, but there is some logic to it—poor blood flow to the brain could lead to dizziness and, since blood flow starts in ...
by Henry Dorn, MDIn 1974, the noted obstetrician Marcus Filshie published a review of the relatively new electronic fetal monitoring in the British Journal of Hospital Medicine. He stated, somewhat fatefully:
Now that the appropriate technology is available, the obstetrician may virtually eliminate intrapartum stillbirths and reduce morbidity to a minimum.Similar statements were made in the United States by leaders in the obstetrical ...
Here are the top posts from this past week, based on the number of times they were viewed.1. Will iodine and potassium iodide protect against radiation from Japan? Instead of spending time and money to find and purchase iodine, it’s much more useful to use those dollars and contribute to the Japan earthquake and tsunami relief efforts instead.2. Why this medical student found primary care awesome, and boring. ...
Huge holes exist in the health reform law you can drive an 18-Wheeler through. These holes are not "devils in the details." They are so obvious nobody talks about them. They are the proverbial elephants in the room. I suppose this makes sense. It takes an 18-wheeler to transport ...
I’d like to thank various media outlets for recently citing KevinMD.com.Huffington Post: What's Up Doc? Physicians On Twitter
Pho agrees that such formalized training is a good idea, not only to teach physicians what to avoid the internet, but to inspire them to use social media. He said: "A lot of physicians say to me, 'Why do I need to participate in social media?' And I say, because that's where ...
If we ever slow health care cost inflation to a sustainable pace, it will be because we learn how to ask 3 simple questions when thinking about a medical treatment.
We badly need effectiveness research — which medical treatments work and which ones don’t. After all, some reasonable estimates are that a third or so what we spend on medical treatments is for things that aren’t known to work, or worse, don’t work. Effectiveness research means comparing two competing therapies to see which works better; if both work the same, our preference ...
by Tayson DeLengocky, DOThe landscape of healthcare delivery has changed so drastically over the past three decades with the proliferation of allied health professions, increased in medical specialization, managed health care, and technology advancement.The direct doctor-patient relations have been relegated to the relations between healthcare providers and patients, in which doctors are only participants among other healthcare givers. A healthcare consumer, patient, can be ...
Medical school is a wonderful, but at times difficult experience. As you start this fantastic journey, there are a few "rules" I think might help.1. You can drink from a fire hydrant, but you’ll need to learn how. The amount of information you are going to be exposed to in medical school is logarithmically more than you had to learn in ...
When Clarissa was 13 she entered Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated for relapsed acute leukemia knowing full well that she had only a 40% chance of survival. Today she is 16 and in excellent health. But it took 2 1/2 years of incredibly rigorous treatments to get there. Equally importantly it meant riding an emotional roller coaster for her and her parents.Clarissa had ...
From Medicare/Medicaid incentives to EHR industry ads, it is hard to cut through the hype and determine if your practice is even ready to try to select and implement an EHR.Implementing an EHR is a transformational exercise for any practice that requires redesigning every aspect of charting, clinical workflow and interaction with patients. However, in too many cases, practices approach EHR ...
Why do my patients with cancer get better care than my patients in primary care? As the senior resident on my hospital’s inpatient leukemia service recently, this question troubled and intrigued me daily.Despite the sheer complexity of treating leukemia (administration of chemotherapy, bone marrow biopsies, stem cell transplantation), the resources required (transplantation routinely costs $1 million), and the severity of the illness ...
I received my Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins in 2006. I took a course on transportation safety where we focused on designing roads for safety, making airlines safer, and decreasing the risk of medical helicopter crashes.In 2007, I worked for Public Citizen, Ralph Nader’s consumer advocacy group. Ralph’s book, Unsafe at Any Speed, forced the automobile industry to focus on converting their cars from steel death ...
Match Day marks one of the most important days in a medical student's career.A computer algorithm "matches" prospective doctors with the residency program they're destined go to.It's also a look at the future trends for various specialties. With a major part of health reform about to be implemented, one naturally gravitates towards primary care, where there currently is a ...
Before I had even begun medical school, I already knew that I would enter primary care when I finished. I had successfully applied for and received a scholarship from the National Health Service Corps Scholars program. By the time I graduated, I knew that after my three years of residency training, I would practice in an underserved area for at least four years, one year of service to America for ...
Kevin Pho, at KevinMD.com, posted a commentary about encounters with "difficult patients." He correctly notes that physicians themselves contribute to these interactions. To reduce the likelihood of these encounters, he suggests that physicians would benefit from more training in "psychosocial skills."Kudos to Kevin for adjusting his own language by the second sentence of his post: He makes the distinction between difficult patient and difficult encounter.A vital step in decreasing ...
by Dawn Barker, MDUntil recently, it was easy to reply when an inquisitive acquaintance asked, “What do you do?” I would answer that I was a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Easy.The most difficult part was trying to explain that yes, a psychiatrist is a medical doctor, and no, I’m not a psychologist and there is a difference. But when ...
According to a recent study from the Archives of Internal Medicine, primary care physicians are referring more patients to specialists than ever...
One of the reasons there is such a movement against vaccines is the democratization of information, perpetuated by search engines like Google....
In a widely circulated CNN article, many radiologists have been found to cheat on their board exams: "Doctors around the country taking an...
Are doctors really going broke? According to this piece from CNN Money, some are: "Doctors list shrinking insurance reimbursements, changing regulations, rising...
As physicians, we are often called upon to be advocates for our patients. Sometimes they have no other person to turn to....
Mike was a runner, outdoors-man, and fitness nut. This was not so much as for health reasons as for "feeling good", but...
William Osler famously said (among other things): “Listen to the patient. He is telling you the diagnosis.” I was doing my obstetrical...
The little boy, who looked to be about two, darted away in a fit of giggles. His young mother, who seemed thoroughly...
For health care professionals, patient engagement is the holy grail of health care. It is the key to patient adherence – a...
This is a response to Deb Discenza's article requesting a one page informational sheet informing a patient about hospice or palliative care. This would...
So, Megen at Not Nurse Ratched wrote post recently about therapeutic presence. The following passage really caught my attention: "Question is: are...
People often ask me how I became a hospice volunteer. For the record, nobody is more surprised than I am. You know...
A social media movement is happening before our eyes with action starting to take shape. The #occupyhealthcare movement has begun within to...
The triple aim of health care, as defined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is: improving the experience of care, bettering...
The storyline is familiar. An organization is challenged to achieve better results without spending more money. An executive is committed to obtaining...
Why are cancer organizations waiting until it starts to rain before they suggest buying an umbrella? “Join my Medicare Advantage plan and...
Many clinical decisions in older persons are dependent on life expectancy. For example, as life expectancy declines, cancer screening is likely to...
“To Err Is Human” is the title of the now famous book from the Institute of Medicine on patient safety published about...
Professor Gunter Dueck, is a calm and eloquent german mathematician who’s also the CTO of IBM Germany. He studied mathematics and philosophy...
Robotics has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare. It can help extend the delivery of information, expertise and clinical care...
As a physician, technology cannot replace you, but it can make you more efficient and effective. This was the message from Richard...
Looking ahead to the next several months, I’ve found myself frequently wondering how many physicians will make this their year to take...
The physician’s decision to first dive into social media can be stress-inducing. Issues of time management, maintaining professionalism, and determining a return...
The impact of social media on medicine could arguably be compared to the impact of the industrial revolution on the human condition....
