Posts tagged as:

specialist

What is the best insulin regimen for patients with diabetes?

November 6, 2009

Originally published in Insidermedicine
The best method for taking insulin among individuals with type 2 diabetes has been identified in research published in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Did Nidal Malik Hasan suffer from compassion fatigue or vicarious traumatization?

November 6, 2009

There are many tragic questions emerging from today’s massacre at Fort Hood. The one I’m interested in is why a reportedly mild-mannered psychiatrist, a specialist in disaster and preventive psychiatry no less, would make the decision to open fire on his fellow soldiers.
One reason may be so-called compassion fatigue, also known as vicarious traumatization [...]

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Clostridium difficile infection is spreading from the hospital to the community

November 5, 2009

Originally published in MedPage Today
by Charles Bankhead, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Clostridium difficile infection has spread from the hospital to the community but has proved manageable thus far.
From 1991 to 2005, the incidence of community-acquired C. difficile in Olmsted County, Minn., quadrupled but still remained less common than the hospital-acquired gastrointestinal infection, Sahil Khanna, MD, [...]

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Diagnosing and treating disease is only a small part of a doctor’s job

November 4, 2009

by Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD
If asked what a doctor does, most people would probably come up with the standard description of diagnosing and treating disease, usually while wearing an ill-fitting white coat. Before I entered practice, even during my medical training that probably would have been my answer too.
But my years in the trenches of [...]

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Football is linked to dementia, and why it should be banned from high schools

November 3, 2009

by Brian E. Moore, MD
Two neuropathologists are prominently spotlighted in an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the October 19 issue of The New Yorker. The article explores a provocative question raised by autopsy results on football players: namely, should football be illegal?
Featured are Dr. Ann McKee, neuropathologist at the Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts and [...]

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Do antipsychotic drugs cause weight gain in children?

November 3, 2009

Originally published in Insidermedicine
Second-generation antipsychotic drugs can produce unwanted weight gain and other metabolic effects among children and youths after only a few weeks, according to research published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Should tobacco companies pay for smokers’ CT scans to screen for lung cancer?

November 3, 2009

According to a potential ruling in Massachusetts, tobacco companies will have to pay for smokers’ screening CT scans.
The Boston Globe (via Doug Farrago) writes that the decision “would allow thousands of other Massachusetts smokers to join the lawsuit, which covers people 50 or older who have smoked at least one pack a day of Marlboro [...]

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Rheumatologists debate whether fibromyalgia is really a disease

November 2, 2009

Originally published in HCPLive.com
What defines a “disease?” At what point does a collection of symptoms and causes make the transition from “condition” to disease? Is it when a consensus forms around a concrete, observable, and repeatable set of biochemical and/or physiological processes and outcomes? Surely there is little doubt that diabetes or hypertension qualify as [...]

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Is the impending physician shortage worse than we thought?

October 31, 2009

Originally published in MedPage Today
by Charles Bankhead, MedPage Today Staff Writer
The physician workforce in the U.S. is growing smaller and younger, according to data from the Census Bureau, but conflicting estimates make it difficult to determine just how many doctors are out there — and how many the nation will need.
The census survey showed 67,000 [...]

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Implementing an EMR or health IT system is harder than it looks

October 31, 2009

by Bob Wachter, MD
In 2001, when my colleagues and I ranked nearly 100 patient safety practices on the strength of their supporting evidence (for an AHRQ report), healthcare IT didn’t make the top 25. We took a lot of heat for, as one prominent patient safety advocate chided me, “slowing down the momentum.” Some called [...]

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Depression is bad for your heart

October 30, 2009

Originally published in Journal Watch Psychiatry
by Steven Dubovsky, MD
And attaining remission significantly improves mortality risk in patients with acute coronary syndromes.

Depression is common after myocardial infarction (MI), and medical outcomes are worse in depressed patients. These researchers addressed long-term survival in a 6.7-year follow-up study of 361 patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) and [...]

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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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An obsession with making money can be a sign of physician burnout

October 29, 2009

Originally published in HCPLive.com
by Jeff Brown, MD
Physician burnout has a tremendous effect on the financial bottom line and is far more common than docs want to talk about.
When I say the bottom line, I am referencing studies that have been done on “workaholics,” another softly defined term, that show in spite of increased hours [...]

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Are specialists preventing the government from spending more on primary care?

October 28, 2009

by Glenn Laffel, MD, PhD
After a painful, summer-long labor, Senate Finance eventually had to be induced before it gave birth to a health reform bill of its own. But give birth it finally did, and the products of its conception now stand alongside the offspring of 4 other proud Congressional committees.
But please! Save the silver [...]

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Medscape op-ed on how to help today’s tense, frustrated doctors

October 28, 2009

My latest opinion piece, co-written with Placebo Journal’s Doug Farrago, was published in Medscape today.
Entitled, Help for Today’s Tense, Frustrated Doctors (registration required), we discuss how doctors benefit from finding a ray of humor, despite the glum practice environment many physicians find themselves in:
Patients also can benefit from some levity during their doctor’s visit. [...]

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