by Scott Cowsill
A third or more of scans may be unnecessary or repetitive, studies show, and in scans that are medically appropriate, radiation doses could be dramatically reduced without hurting the quality of images.
As pointed out by Robert Centor, MD, “one cannot easily develop rules for testing because the presentations that we see vary so greatly.” That being said, guidelines for diagnostic …
The news that Dr. Marcus Conant has quit practicing medicine is a blow to healthcare here in the Bay Area.
And a sad symbol of all that is wrong with healthcare – and in particularly, the way we treat primary care practitioners – in America today. It would be hard to find a doctor more symbolic of the best of medicine than Marcus Conant – a man willing to devote …
by Crystal Phend
iPod users beware. Listening to an MP3 player for even an hour can induce short-term hearing loss, researchers affirmed.
Compared with controls, hearing deterioration among MP3 users was 3.97 to 4.40 times more likely when listening to pop/rock music through earbud headphones at different output levels, found Hannah Keppler, MS, of Ghent University in Ghent, Belgium, and colleagues.
Listening to an iPod with over-the-ear headphones also boosted the odds of …
by Brad Stuart, MD
The emergency department phoned my office right before lunch.
I was on call for our general IM group, so when I was done with my morning schedule I walked across the street to the hospital. Greg, my partner’s 38 year old patient, was a woodworker admitted with fever, chills, cough, a sharp pain in his right side, and a WBC of 18,000. On the chest x-ray, I …
Dana Jennings writes what is arguably the world’s most famous patient blog about his treatment for prostate cancer.
Just to be clear, I don’t have any statistics about how many readers he and other patient bloggers have. I believe his blog is the most widely read and best-know patient blog because of the number of comments he receives and its prominent location in the New York Times Health section, itself …
I’ve only been studying healthcare for two years and I hesitate to be overly assertive.
But I have, finally, reached the point where I feel confident in citing cases where people are simply being unscientific: ignoring evidence. That’s always hazardous, and it becomes insidious when it’s caused by a blind, unquestioning belief in our institutions.
Case in point:
Julie Thoren is an active practitioner of Participatory Medicine who’s seen first-hand the tremendous value …
If you have to ask what jazz is, you will never know.
– Louis Armstrong
The stillness in the meeting room was electric.
First, one panelist addressed the audience members who have never experienced a malignancy. She described the unique and powerful bond that exists between cancer survivors. She described how the brush with mortality forces each survivor to renegotiate terms with Life itself. She reminded everyone that the cancer care system too often lets …
A recent blog post and series of responses on KevinMD.com aroused my interest.
Dr. Kevin Pho posed the question: Why are doctors so reluctant to discuss end-of-life care? Responders, including patients, doctors, nurses, and even a veterinarian highlighted the stress inherent in this discussion for patients and for medical professionals alike.
To me, the real issue is not whether the discussion should occur, because clearly it should, but when and how? …
Over the past few weeks I’ve had ample opportunity to be on the other side. Not like some parents with chronically ill children or those with children who have suffered tragic illness. No, not like that; I am fortunate that hospitals aren’t a part of my family’s everyday (except for work). My children have had amazing fortune and I remain in awe of good health. Lately though, we’ve had some …
I used to get frustrated when patients, typically at the very end of a long visit for some other serious problem, would utter one-liners like “What can I take for headaches?” “How do I know if I have cancer?” or “Why can’t I lose weight?”
Now I have a one-liner, of sorts, myself in response to those types of questions. I usually lean back slightly, widen my eyes, nod and say:
“Now, …
by Diana E. Lee
At an appointment with my local neurologist I showed up feeling bone tired and mentally drained.
Next thing I knew I was going back on a medication I had deliberately chosen to stop taking just because a doctor told me I should be taking something.
When the doctor finally came into my exam room he looked over the list of medications I was taking and declared that Lyrica alone …
Should doctors face consequences if they run late?
From the New York Times’ health blog, Well, comes a story where a medical group promises, “same-day appointments and longer, more personalized visits that start on time.”
Sounds good, right?
But it comes with a caveat, namely, a $199 annual membership fee. A tremendous amount of primary care can be bought with that amount of money, and if patients were willing to pay that, …
The Annals of Internal Medicine had a perspective article by palliative medicine communication gurus Drs. Tim Quill, Bob Arnold, and Tony Back which details an approach to discussing treatment preferences with patients who want “everything.”
When I think of a patient requesting “everything,” I typically think of it as a response to a physician who offers the patient the choice of “doing nothing” if the patient’s heart should stop or …
What do Enterprise Rent-a-Car, KeyBank, and the Cleveland Clinic have in common?
They all make customer (patient) satisfaction a top priority.
They accomplish this in industry-specific ways, but together their emphasis on service as a passion shares common themes:
1. Buy-in for a service culture comes straight from the top, and permeates the entire organization.
2. Copious resources are delegated to building a service culture, starting with hiring.
3. Employees are “hired for fit.” If …
In case you missed it, salt is the new fat.
It seems that everybody from the FDA to Steven Colbert of the Colbert Report has set their sights on limiting our consumption of salt. In the past week, I’ve seen dozens of articles from the blogosphere to the front page of USA Today and a recent edition of Time on reducing our alarming levels of salt consumption.
Many of us are aware …
Thanks to modern medicine, more people are living longer, but a longer life isn’t always a healthier one. According to the American Cancer Society, about 77 percent of people diagnosed with cancer are 55 or older.
Living a healthy lifestyle is important to reducing cancer risks. But as we age, it’s sometimes easy to forget the importance of exercise, proper nutrition and stress management, which is why I like to solicit …
“You can’t afford to be sick!”
I hate these ads.
You’ve seen them. They’re in newspapers and regional magazines across the country. Some smiling mom and her cute kid. It’s an ad for some local clinic, always with a tagline like “You can’t afford to be sick!” or “You don’t have time to be sick!”
And they list things they treat, like headache, sore throat, ankle sprain, runny nose, and skinned knees. They …
I’ve had disgusting congestion in my nose/sinuses for the past month or so.
I’ve never had a sinus infection in my life despite having horrible allergies to dust. I take Claritin every day for my allergies. But this time, the issues just wouldn’t go away. I needed to go see a doctor. So last night around 8pm I made an appointment with Dr. Samuel Grubman via ZocDoc for 9am this morning. …
“No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this — ‘devoted and obedient.’ This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.”
-Florence Nightingale, 1859
Please take a moment to celebrate the nurses in your life. Florence Nightingale was the first to publicly decry the sorry …
“These are exciting and very promising times for the widespread application of information technology to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, while also reducing costs, but there is much yet to do, and in my comments I want to note especially the importance of the resource that is most often under-utilized in our information systems – our patients.”
– Charles Safran MD, testimony to the House Ways & Means subcommittee on health [Emphasis …
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