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Is ethical for parents to refuse surgical treatment for their child?

Physician

December 27, 2011

The principle of autonomy is one of the four guiding principles of medical ethics, the others being beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. It means that patients have the right to decide what is done to their own bodies. For children under eighteen, the age of majority, this means their parents decide for them. What happens when parents refuse a treatment that their child’s doctors recommend? (The right of a minor child …

The 7 types of medical students you’ll meet

Collin Creange

Medical Education

December 24, 2011

The third year of medical school is definitely an interesting one. You leave the classroom and enter the big bad world of medicine, and you quickly realize that much of what you’ve learned is for naught. You also realize that the medical student next to you could become your best friend, or the bane of your existence — or fall anywhere along that spectrum. Here is a list of the …

Conflict between physician and nurse

Sarah Beth Cowherd, RN

Physician

December 19, 2011

When it comes to doctor- nurse interactions, when is enough, enough?

Recently, I dealt with an upsetting situation involving a physician and nurse. A little background: The nurse has been working on our unit for years (since it first opened). She is very smart and savvy when it comes to nursing. She constantly gets feedback from the patients as being one of the kindest, most thorough nurses. I look up to …

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Conflict between physician and nurse

Did hospital politics lead to physician suicide?

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

Physician

December 17, 2011

What causes a doctor to commit suicide?

A story about a radiation oncologist from Springfield, IL brought this strange case to my attention. Dr. Thomas G. Shanahan committed suicide by cutting his throat in November of 2011. He was respected in his field, having published many research papers and traveled the world helping to set up brachytherapy clinics in several countries. He also had been an acting alderman in his …

How political correctness interferes with healthcare

Dominic A. Carone, PhD

Physician

December 14, 2011

Political correctness and sensitivity training are interfering with medicine and healthcare. In a recent article published in the journal, Pediatrics, a group of researchers published their findings regarding parental perceptions of the terminology that doctors use to describe childhood obesity (ages 2 to 18). The researchers found that it was undesirable to use the term “fat,” “obese,” or “morbidly obese” because they were stigmatizing, blaming, and the least motivating to …

Saying no to your oncologist is sometimes the right thing to do

Lucy Hornstein, MD

Physician

December 11, 2011

Cancer is a dreadful disease. Just dreadful. Make no mistake: I have tremendous respect for the awesome doctors who treat patients afflicted with it day after day. Still, paradoxically, I can’t help but notice that some of them have just as hard a time as do other doctors with caring for patients at the end of their lives. I believe a large part of their difficulty stems from the ridiculously …

MKSAP: 42-year-old woman with lymphadenopathy, fatigue, and edema

mksap

Conditions and Diseases

December 10, 2011

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

A 42-year-old woman is evaluated for a 3-month history of progressive cervical lymphadenopathy, fatigue, night sweats, bilateral lower-extremity and abdominal wall edema, and a 4.5-kg (10.0-lb) weight gain. History is significant for three episodes of weight gain and facial and lower-extremity edema lasting 4 weeks in …

The difference between a child psychologist and child psychiatrist

Roy Michael Stefanik, DO

Physician

December 8, 2011

What exactly is the difference between a child psychologist and child psychiatrist? The two terms are frequently mistakenly interchanged, but the requirements for the two are considerably different.

To become a child psychologist, many programs require that you get an undergraduate degree in psychology, although some graduate programs will only require that you take the prerequisite sciences courses (biology, physical and social sciences, statistics, mathematics, etc.) before applying for the graduate …

Young doctors don’t see value in primary care careers

John Schumann, MD

Physician

December 5, 2011

In my new role as one of the directors of an internal medicine training program, I help select new interns out of medical school for the three year training stint of residency.

At the end of residency, many graduates go on to subspecialty fellowships, another two to four year period of intensive training in fields like cardiology, nephrology, critical care etc.

For those that don’t choose a subspecialty, one choice remains: traditional …

Are doctors given more responsibility than they can handle?

Nagarathna Manjappa, MD

Physician

December 5, 2011

Doctors inevitably come into spotlight, being at the front end of health care delivery. Sometimes seen as guardian angels restoring health and life, other times, greedy minds sucking resources while they carelessly harm and kill patients to fill their wallets. After experiencing, observing, and hearing from others like me, I wonder if doctors are given more responsibility than they can handle, often attributed more aura than they deserve and frequently …

Why rheumatology is sexy

Ronan Kavanagh, MD

Physician

December 2, 2011

Although as a medical student rheumatology was always associated with an air of mystery and complexity to me – factors which might have aroused a younger me had they been associated with a member of the opposite sex – the specialty didn’t catch my eye at all as an undergraduate. To a medical student cruising for medical action in the 1980′s, rheumatology wouldn’t have got as far as a first …

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Why rheumatology is sexy

Impersonal care from the new generation of physicians

Norman Silverman, MD

Physician

December 1, 2011

Historically, American physicians and surgeons were fiercely independent practitioners, who owned their own practices, worked long days and maybe longer nights, made a good income, but saw little of their families. They trained in a male-dominated world in “residency,” so named originally because their extended 120 hour/week work schedule demanded them living in dormitory type residence adjacent to the hospital.

They developed long-standing professional commitment to their patients that superceded time …

I eat lunch with drug company representatives and I’m proud of it

Stewart Segal, MD

Medications

December 1, 2011

Today, I want to review another article I wrote in last year. That article started with a confession: “I confessed that I ate lunch with a representative of a pharmaceutical company.”

I must now confess that I often eat lunch with representatives of pharmaceutical companies and I’m proud of it. At this stage of my career, I can well afford my own lunch. I could sit quietly and relax over a cup …

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