This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.1. Sun Safety Still Not Strong Among the Young. Young adults continue to risk developing skin cancer, despite some improvements in protective behavior.2. Big Midsection May Up Risk of Dying Suddenly. Carrying too much weight in the belly -- having an apple shape -- may increase the risk of sudden cardiac death.3.
Shortness of breath. I felt it for the first time while running on June 21st, 2011. I had just been rejected from my first choice medical school a few days prior – post-interview, the worst. I took it as a personal affront. They didn’t like me, my personality. I wondered how I had come off – fake, phony, artificially enthusiastic maybe. Maybe they didn’t think I was up to their ...
One morning recently, I found another physician standing morosely at one of the mobile computer terminals we refer to as “cows”—computers on wheels—that are everywhere now in our hospital. I asked what was the matter. “Oh nothing, really,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t feel I know the patients as well as I used to.”I knew exactly what she meant. Things are different now that we have the EMR---the ...
Solving the American health care system crisis is among the most complex and important challenges facing this generation. Is it possible to provide high quality care with better access at a more affordable cost? Is this problem solvable or simply to complicated? Though that answer is not yet clear, what is increasingly apparent is that a new type leadership is needed if there is any hope in achieving this goal.Professor ...
All of us would like, whenever possible, to have a bilateral referral arrangement with our colleagues. Have you ever experienced a situation in which you are sending patients to another physician and receiving no reverse referrals? Of course, you can change your referral source, hoping that the other physician will notice that there is a decrease in referrals and will call you to ask what happened, but do not hold ...
This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.1. Cath Labs May No Longer Need Surgical Backup. Many of the restrictions put on cardiac catheterization laboratories that don't have on-site surgical backup are ready to be lifted.2. IUDs Effective as Emergency Contraception. Intrauterine devices (IUDs) seem to be an effective method of emergency contraception, with a failure rate of less than one ...
A recent New York Times article predicted that accountable care organizations (ACOs) and similar care consortiums will completely upend health care delivery in the United States by 2020. While that’s provocative speculation, physicians and other care providers practicing in population management entities do need to ramp up their ability to explain new health care delivery models to their patients. In doing so, they will want to pay particular attention to increased expectation ...
Recently, I passed my friend and colleague, Dr. Ekaterini Tsiapali, in the stairwell. We rarely get to catch up these days, so it was really quite a nice surprise to see her."What did you do this weekend?" I asked."I watched Wit, you know, the movie where Emma Thompson plays Dr. Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old woman with terminal ovarian cancer? She's such ...
I walked down the hospital corridor listlessly. My feet dragged as they fought each attempt to lift off the ground. My body was tired and achy. The phone calls the night before had been relentless. Each stolen moment of sleep was interrupted before a deep, restful state was reached. It was Monday morning.I sat at the nursing station flipping through charts. A colleague across the table was staring intently at ...
Here today, gone tomorrow. The older I get, the more often I get the call: “This is the ER at Any Hospital, can you hold for Dr. X?” Dr. X then comes on the line and tells me my patient had a catastrophic event, that the paramedics and ER crew did everything possible but that the patient expired.My patient had no reason to die. He was relatively young and healthy. ...
This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.1. Study Links Late Depression, Risk of Dementia. Depression that strikes for the first time in later life may be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease.2. Outcomes Worse for Inhospital Stent Thrombosis. Among patients who underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for an ST-segment elevation MI (STEMI), outcomes were worse if stent thrombosis occurred ...
Next Friday, May 18th, I'm honored to give a keynote address to the PRSA Health Academy Conference in Philadelphia, PA.Titled, "Connect and be heard: Use social media to make a heath care difference," I will reflect on my social media journey since 2004, and share stories of how health professionals can use social media to teach ...
The nation’s “safety net” hospitals are designed to ensure that uninsured, lower income and indigent populations receive adequate medical care – a noble and necessary function within the U.S. healthcare system. No one dedicated to the field of care giving can deny the importance of providing appropriate medical care for this population. The safety net is literally a lifeline for many in need.But for all of the vital and positive ...
The ambulance crew rolled him into my ER breathless in his pajamas, O2 mask on his face, gasping for air, his short cropped hair a mess, standing straight up. Eugene was what the staff called a "frequent flyer." As the nurse injected some IV Lasix I reviewed his chart to find a classic downward spiral.It was a busy evening. The bays were full of the usual cuts, broken bones and ...
Medicine improves regularly. Our tests, our surgeries, our medicines are better now than they were 10 years ago. The main driver of this improvement is the scientific method. Using this, the worse is discarded and the better retained. Doctors have to work hard to keep up with the progress. They rely on impartial and accurate information transmitted by articles, reviews, and CME material in order to advise and treat their ...
Much has been written about the positive benefits of communication between patient and physician. Today, in the increasingly time-pressured medical work environment, physicians are pushed to see more patients in less time. Patients are moved thru clinics as if on an assembly line. There are fewer opportunities for conversation and many patients and providers never really get to know each other on a “human” and interpersonal level. Care often suffers ...
This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.1. Breast Cancer Deadlier for Men. Relatively few men develop breast cancer, but survival lags for those who do compared with women.2. Mandates Boost Vaccine Coverage in 'Tweens. Mandatory vaccination for entry to middle school appears to increase vaccine coverage among students.3. Sudden Death in Athletes: Debate Continues. Relying on media reports ...
Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but more involvement by nurse practioneers and others. And increasing appreciation of the value of integrative medicine. These are but a few of the disruptive changes in care delivery that are coming.I have posted concepts on how the health care delivery system will change in coming years – quite ...
I’m not sure when I stopped missing my husband. I suppose familiarity crept in after 7 years together and I rarely felt the pining, agitated pain of separation that I relished in the early days of our passionate love.Running our restaurant from waking to sleep, 6 days a week meant that we were rarely apart. So JP had become as familiar to me as my 4 limbs, an essential part ...
Can you say “reactance”? Don’t feel bad, I wasn’t familiar with the term either until recently. But as you will see, anyone that has ever been a patient will catch on pretty quickly as to what reactance is and how it works.Reactance is how we respond to something that threatens to limit or eliminate our behavioral freedom. I recently experienced reactance in the course of “prepping” for a colonoscopy. The ...
Who has the potential to be the most influential physician of our generation? It's Priscilla Chan, who not only recently graduated from...
In a widely anticipated move, the USPSTF officially recommended against prostate cancer screening in healthy men. Case closed, right? Hardly. The prostate...
When it comes to medicine and social media, much of the attention is negative. Doctors losing their hospital privileges because of Facebook....
A version of this column was published on April 24, 2012 in USA Today. There has been a recent uptick of elderly men...
I was appalled recently by the coverage of radiology “test recalls” by CNN, amplified by Dr. Gary Becker of the American Board...
I was invited to a medical staff leadership conference sponsored by our hospital. A company specializing in training physician leaders ran the...
As a cardiac electrophysiologist, I have had to discuss bad news with patients and families more times than I would like during...
He looked dead. The paramedics brought him down the hall toward one of my critical care beds, and for a moment I...
I was honored to be part of a beautiful experience in late January of 2011. It was the death of my mother-in-law...
Theirs is a lonely journey; to be moving towards the separation and end of all things known and loved. Being with a...
As a patient who was asked to speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2012 conference, I felt a bit covert....
Nothing will force you to live life on your own terms faster than almost losing it. In 2008, I was on fire....
America has this paradox of excellent biomedical science, innovative drug manufacturers and entrepreneurial device developers along with outstanding providers but at the...
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." So begins a story called A Tale of Two...
The nation’s “safety net” hospitals are designed to ensure that uninsured, lower income and indigent populations receive adequate medical care – a...
Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but...
Propaganda and non-truths abound all around the Internet saying that mobile health apps are everything from a threat to Big Pharma to...
The policeman was two cars in front of me. I meandered down the road cautiously adjusting my speed a few ticks above...
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people look for a doctor on Google. As an amazing practitioner, your site deserves to be...
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the physician’s office were the tall cabinets filled with manila folders, tabbed with...
Prior to 1794, farms across the world could only pick cotton as fast as humanly possible. In the late 18th century, Eli Whitney...
Social media in healthcare is all the rage these days. You can’t visit even one physician-oriented website without someone breathlessly advising you...
Want to understand social media? Physicians wanting to learn about social media must learn transparency. We must learn transparency on a personal...
It was my first ER shift in charge of the resuscitation area. Needless to say, my adrenaline and nerves were firing like...
