Here are some of the more interesting comments readers have left recently.
1. Mediaslackers on the UK's proposed 48-hour physician workweek:
I agree there are significant dangers inherent with limiting the number of hours a doctor can work in a week, but I don't think they are totally insurmountable or all that much greater than when a doctor is working 30 hours straight, getting a divorce ...
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On April 1st, the FDA demanded that the production of concentrated liquid morphine, among others, be stopped.
9 days later, they changed their mind and rescinded the decision.
Had they gone through with the ban, shockwaves would have been sent through the palliative care community. As physician Christian Sinclair notes, with only the lower concentration available, "Giving a dying patient with dysphagia 5ml instead of 1ml ...
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ER and Scrubs get positive comments, while House, M.D. gets almost universally panned.
MedPage Today performed a survey showing that 90 percent of respondents felt that medical shows on television impacted the doctor-patient relationship.
It's interesting to read the almost universal condemnation of Fox's House, M.D., saying that the show "gives a very bad name to physicians and the medical ...
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A three-year old boy is made to cry in this anti-smoking commercial, outraging viewers.
Advertising mogul Donny Deutsch applauded the spot, and dismisses the crying, saying, "Maybe sometimes they make a kid cry, but if it saves 20,000 lives for five seconds of crying, I'll take it."
So, how far should commercials go to implore smokers to quit?
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The water engulfing JAMA's editor-in-chief Catherine DeAngelis is getting hotter.
A recap is here, but the Jonathan Leo flap, and subsequent response, is not going away as JAMA hoped it would.
The WSJ reports that AMA, which normally does not interfere in the editorial decisions of the journal, has asked its Journal Oversight Committee to look into the matter.
Over at Respectful Insulance, academic surgeon-blogger ...
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It seems that residents and medical students are having trouble intubating patients these days.
Apparently, one of the biggest mistakes is positioning the head incorrectly, and the problem is traced back to the television drama ER. When surveyed, most young doctors and medical students cited television as the main source of tips on how to intubate correctly, specifically, ER.
But when researchers ...
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A couple of interviews I recently did have been published.
Over at Modern Medicine (via the Cosmetic Surgery Times, of all places), I talk about pro-actively creating an online presence, and how it can make or break the marketing of your practice:
"Patients are eventually going to find you on the Internet," whether or not you have actively established your Web presence, Dr. Pho points out. ...
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JAMA forcefully responded to the recent allegations of a small university professor going behind their back to mainstream media outlets.
As MedPage Today reports, JAMA sought to preempt any form of criticism, saying, "The person bringing the allegation will be specifically informed that he/she should not reveal this information to third parties or the media while the investigation is under way."
I'm not sure how enforceable that ...
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Who knew that doctor chatter could be so profitable?
The two major physician-only social networking sites, Sermo and Medscape Physician Connect, are making news, as this piece in Newsweek notes how both the pharmaceutical and the financial industries are listening in on the conversations.
These sites, however, are a relatively new phenomenon, and some wonder what would happen if doctors post something unsavory, or even illegal, on the ...
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Is the cover-up becoming worse than the proverbial crime?
According to the WSJ Health Blog, Jonathan Leo, a professor of neuro-anatomy from a small university in Tennessee, critiqued a study published in JAMA, and pointed out an association between the study's author and a pharmaceutical company. He posted his thoughts on the website of the British Medical Journal.
None too happy, Leo then received calls from ...
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