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medical school

Primary care disrespect starts early in medical school

November 20, 2009

In medical schools, primary care continues to be among the least respected fields a student can choose.
No where is that more starkly illustrated than in Pauline Chen’s recent New York Times piece, where she tells a story of a bright medical student who had the audacity to choose primary care as a career:
Kerry wanted to [...]

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Is the hospital July phenomenon a myth?

November 10, 2009

“Don’t go to the hospital in July.”
That’s the prevailing public perception, since that’s when new resident-physicians begin their hospital training. And indeed, there have been studies from Australia and England showing a higher rate of death and adverse events during this time.
But what about in the United States?
Recent data isn’t so conclusive. A piece [...]

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Are doctors getting enough skin cancer exam training?

October 30, 2009

Originally published in MedPage Today
by Nancy Walsh, MedPage Today Contributing Writer
Opportunities to learn how to perform skin cancer examinations during medical training are inadequate, a survey of residents found.
More than half (55.3%) of residents said that they had never observed a skin cancer examination, 75.8% said they’d never been taught to perform one, and [...]

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Doctors lose a part of their training when resident work-hours are capped

October 27, 2009

The restrictions on resident work-hours arguably most impacts the field of surgery.
I understand that fatigue increases the risk of medical errors, but in this excellent post, Jeffrey Parks notes some benefits of being immersed in the hospital. Something is lost as doctors are scuttled out of the hospital when the 81st hour starts.
Dr. Parks notes [...]

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How emotional stress affects physician training

October 21, 2009

Much has been made of fatigue increasing the number of medical errors doctors make.
But what about other factors, like emotional stress?
That’s a little-reported issue that Pauline Chen addresses in her recent New York Times column. In residency, some doctors-in-training have to care for small children, among other life issues. As Dr. Chen notes, [...]

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How work-hour restrictions harms resident surgeon training

October 5, 2009

Controversy persists about limiting the work hours of resident physicians.
No where is it more prevalent than in surgery, where proficiency depends on the number of times a trainee physician performs a procedure. In a recent study from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 43 percent of surgical residents want to work more [...]

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Are iPhones or Blackberrys better for doctors and medical students?

September 22, 2009

by Tom Tharp
A recent Manhattan Research study found that twice as many physicians are using Apple iPhones this year than last, but that BlackBerry is still the most popular smartphone among physicians. The same study found the percentage of physicians in the U.S. using smartphones increased 20 percent from 2008 to 2009.

With more and more [...]

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What does bias when analyzing data have to do with slow lines?

September 20, 2009

by Paul Levy
Here’s an excerpt from a lovely little book by John D. Barrow called One Hundred Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know; Math Explains the World. This selection has a great lesson about statistical inference. The chapter is entitled, “Why does the other queue always move faster?”
You will have noticed that when [...]

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Are cardiologists going to take their reimbursement frustrations out on primary care residents?

September 11, 2009

It’s no secret that, in an attempt to increase the pay of primary care doctors, Medicare is going to run in serious resistance from the specialists. In this article from Bloomberg, for example, we’re seeing backlash from cardiologists.
What caught my attention was how cardiologists in residency programs may now harbor resentment against primary care [...]

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Should the informed consent discussion be formally taught?

August 19, 2009

Most medical students don’t take classes on how to discuss informed consent, that is, talking about the risks and benefits of a medical procedure with a patient.
Pauline Chen remembers such conversations, where she “bumbled through each consent on [her] own, picking up certain phrases and dropping others through a sometimes painful and often awkward process [...]

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Medical students want to become primary care doctors, until reality hits

August 10, 2009

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, only 2 percent of medical students are entering primary care internal medicine.
A fourth year medical student gives some reasons why in a Baltimore Sun op-ed:
Like many medical students, I proudly wear Obama T-shirts and yearn to reform medicine. While watching the president speak, I envision myself [...]

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Should health policy be mandatory for medical students?

July 21, 2009

With health reform upon us, it would be helpful if future doctors knew a bit more about health policy.
Although some schools give some token courses on the subject, the majority don’t. For instance, everything I learned about health policy was from reading medical and policy-related blogs over the past few years.
This piece from Slate [...]

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Can doctors resist the temptation of money?

July 16, 2009

That’s a tall order for many American physicians.
Atul Gawande recently addressed the graduating class of the University of Chicago medical school. In his speech, which is an extension of his celebrated New Yorker piece, he looks at so-called “positive deviants,” or doctors who practice higher value, higher quality care, than everyone else.
What makes these [...]

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