I know what I want in healthcare. I want it to be efficient, effective, thoughtful and inexpensive. I want it to create healthy people who don't need very much health care. I want it to involve elegant solutions to problems that take less time, money and effort. I want it to be so much easier and less expensive that taking care of all of our people uses even less resources ...
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The use of ultrasound has had a large impact on health care in resource poor countries. This article details some of the research that has been done overseas to look at the impact on bedside ultrasound by caregivers to deliver more appropriate care for injured and ill patients in Africa, Asia and Mexico.
Using an ultrasound to determine how dehydrated a child ...
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An article from Sweden was recently published showing that in a very large group of women, over 60,000 of them, followed for 19 years as part of an also very interesting study of the effectiveness of mammograms, women who get more calcium, in their diet or as supplements, had a higher risk of dying of anything, but especially of heart attacks. It is ...
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First a disclaimer: People often receive compassionate, considerate and effective care at hospitals. They have countless interactions which impart the miracle of human caring and enrich their lives. It is also institutionally prevalent to have haphazard care with poor communication, near misses and avoidable misery.
I have been working at a university hospital emergency room as part of a mini-fellowship in bedside ultrasound. It is the first time I have spent ...
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Hospitals are very focused on avoiding harming patients lately. They have been moving in that direction for a long time, but with health care reform legislation, payments are on the line, which makes something that was a very good idea into an imperative.
In the year 2000, the Institute of Medicine, a non-profit organization that monitors various aspects of medical care, reported that 44,000-98,000 people died each year due to medical ...
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During the last year I have been paying particular attention to lesser known and under appreciated miracles in medicine. It is a mystery why miracles of any sort would be under appreciated, but it is so very human to ignore things in plain sight which disrupt our deeply held belief systems or even are simply not what we are looking for.
For those readers who don't believe that they could actually ignore something ...
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Colorado and Washington state have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. I thought this would take longer to legislate, especially with the recent backlash from the federal government about medical marijuana. Eighteen states (including California, Alaska, Vermont and Oregon) allow marijuana to be used for medical reasons, but have restrictions on which conditions can be treated with it, which don't necessarily correlate ...
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Locum tenens (literally "place holder") is professional work done to fill in where help is needed. It is what I have primarily been doing for the last year, and has been an interesting ride.
When I decided to leave my practice related to losing a couple of partners and wanting to update my knowledge base and re-evaluate my career, I decided to do locum tenens work. I had always thought that ...
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The bacteria that live in our healthy guts are a garden of cooperating and competing species that help to determine our intestinal health. When we take antibiotics, we kill countless bystander bacteria in our guts and sometimes develop changes in our digestion which can be severe. Clostridium difficile infection is one of these conditions, a superinfection with a bacterium which is pretty resistant to antibiotics and causes infection of the ...
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Today I've been feeling stupid. My job absolutely requires critical, creative thinking and the ability to focus well, which was really hard today. But I don't think I'm actually stupid. I think it has something to do with the task at hand.
So this is how today went. I think it kind of explains the stupid feeling.
My morning shift started at 7:30am in ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
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Kevin Pho, MD | Kevin's Take