Source: TuftsNow Written by Kim Thurler February 16, 2023–Anita Mathews, M17, recalls her excitement a decade ago when, as an incoming MD/MPH student at Tufts University School of Medicine, she learned of a new program to develop physician leaders dedicated to providing healthcare to marginalized groups and transforming care in partnership with …
Read More »Black Female Physician Leaders On Improving Diversity In Medicine
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer Written by Sarah Gantz January 24, 2023–Jasmine Brown’s class of medical students at the University of Pennsylvania has about 170 students — 23 of whom are Black. Of those, she is one of 10 women. In her new book, Twice as Hard, Brown unearthed the stories …
Read More »OB-GYN Clinical Trials Lack Racial, Ethnic Inclusivity
Source: Northwestern Written By Kristin Samuelson December 21, 2022–All non-white racial and ethnic groups are underrepresented in OB-GYN clinical trials, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Since clinical trials and scientific publications inform clinical care, failing to report the race and ethnicity of study participants and conducting homogenous, non-representative research …
Read More »AAMC Specialty Report Explores The Choices of America’s Doctors
Source: AAMCNEWS Written By: Patrick Boyle, Senior Staff Writer More women are becoming doctors, doctors of different racial backgrounds are drawn to different areas of practice, and sports medicine continues to grow fastest of all specialties, according to a new report from the AAMC. Interest is booming in sports medicine and interventional …
Read More »Some Doctors May Be At Higher Risk For Burnout Studies Show
Source: American Medical Association Written By: Sara Berg, MS November 30, 2022–During her career, AMA member Kim Templeton, MD, has seen the issues that physicians are facing at all stages of their careers. More specifically, Dr. Templeton has conducted research on the issues that women physicians face in terms of …
Read More »U.S. Task Force Recommends Doctors Screen Adult Patients For Anxiety
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) Bulletin WASHINGTON, D.C. – September 20, 2022 – The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force) today posted draft recommendation statements on screening for depression and suicide risk in adults and screening for anxiety in adults. For the first time, the Task Force is …
Read More »Pandemic Leads To Increase In Plastic Surgery
More people working from home spend hours on video calls, inevitably looking at themselves for long periods of time and not liking what they see. This has led to an increase in cosmetic surgeries, Doctors calling it the Zoom Boom. Dr. Michael Wojtanowski, a surgeon at the Ohio Clinic for …
Read More »TED Talks To Help Battle Burnout
Doctors are at high risk for burnout. According to the American Medical Association, Physician burnout is a long‑term stress reaction characterized by depersonalization. This can include: Cynical or negative attitudes toward patients. Emotional exhaustion. A feeling of decreased personal achievement. Lack of empathy for patients. Here are some TED talks that …
Read More »Mother And Daughter Graduate Medical School At Same Time And Match At Same Hospital
Dr. Cynthia Kudji and daughter, Dr. Jasmine Kudji are making history together as the first-ever mother-daughter duo to graduate from medical school at the same time and match at the same hospital. According to The University of Medicine and Health Sciences (UMHS), Cynthia and Jasmine, both matched at LSU Health in Louisiana …
Read More »Mindfulness Techniques To Help Physicians With Stress
Ronald M. Epstein, M.D., Professor of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York, and a family and palliative care Physician, believes mindfulness is a powerful tool for medical professionals in dealing with personal stress, being more compassionate, and reducing clinical errors. “Anyone whose work involves immense human suffering …
Read More »Specialties With the Highest and Lowest Rates of Burnout
Burnout is a major obstacle for Physicians that affects their happiness, relationships, career, and the care they provide. It has been described as long-term, unresolvable job-related stress that leads to exhaustion, cynicism, feelings of detachment from one’s job responsibilities, and lack of a sense of personal accomplishment. A new triennial …
Read More »Think Like a Doctor: Drowning on Dry Land Solved
By Lisa Sanders, M.D. via nytimes.com On Thursday we challenged Well readers to unravel the case of a 67-year-old healthy retiree who suddenly developed knife-like chest pain and a worsening cough. Maybe this case was too easy because more than a quarter of you figured it out. The correct diagnosis is: Eosinophilic pneumonia, caused …
Read More »The Doctor’s Computer Will Email You Now
By Barbara Feder Ostrov via www.npr.org A health care startup made a wild pitch to Cara Waller, CEO of the Newport Orthopedic Institute. The company said it could get patients more engaged with their care by automating physician empathy. It “almost made me nauseous,” she said. How can you automate something …
Read More »A New Effort Has Doctors Turn Patients Into Donors
Written by Gina Kolata via www.nytimes.com A well-to-do cancer patient is nearing the end of her treatments. During an office visit, she says to her doctor, “I can’t thank you enough for the care you provided.” Should the doctor simply accept the patient’s gratitude — or gently suggest a way for her to show …
Read More »Physicians- Stand Tall Against Sexual Assault
Dr. Rani G. Whitfield via www.huffingtonpost.com A doctor-patient relationship based on trust and effective communication is key to successfully managing the physical and mental health of my clients. Obtaining a thorough health history, narrowing down the possible diagnoses, ordering the correct test, stressing compliance with treatment regimens, and emphasis on follow …
Read More »Doctors Urged To Screen Teens For Major Depression
Liz Szabo via www.usatoday.com Doctors should screen teenagers for major depression, a federal advisory group said Monday, but only if their young patients have access to mental health professionals who can diagnose them, provide treatment and monitor their progress. That’s a big “if.” Mental health services are in short supply for anyone, …
Read More »Will Technology Replace The Physician to Diagnose and Treat Diseases?
Rajeev S Kapoor via www.linkedin.com In the past two weeks, we have delved into why physicians are now leaving their professions and taking their children with them. We have seen the negative, sobering statistics of patient-doctor relationships with healthcare reform regulations. We have noticed the move of doctors from medicine to …
Read More »Physicians Avoid Conversations About Religion in the ICU
Alexandra Sifferlin via TIME Even though it’s important to patients and their families Religion and spirituality are not common topics of discussion in intensive care units (ICUs), and doctors often go out of their way to avoid them—even though religion is often very important to patients and their medical surrogates …
Read More »Will Doctors Soon Be Prescribing Video Games For Mental Health?
April Dembosky via www.npr.org Developers of a new video game for your brain say theirs is more than just another get-smarter-quick scheme. Akili, a Northern California startup, insists on taking the game through a full battery of clinical trials so it can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration — …
Read More »How Doctors Want To Die Is Different Than Most People
By Stephanie O’Neill via CNN Dr. Kendra Fleagle Gorlitsky recalls the anguish she used to feel performing CPR on elderly, terminally ill patients. “I felt like I was beating up people at the end of their life,” she says. It looks nothing like what people see on TV. In real …
Read More »Printed Pills to Model Hearts: How 3-D Printing Is Changing Health
Gillian Mohney http: abcnews.go.com Quicker and faster 3-D printers have allowed not just amazing objects to be created, seemingly out of nothing, but have started to affect how doctors and medical providers treat patients. This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of the first 3-D printed pill. …
Read More »Giving Doctors Grades
Sandeep Jauhar www.nytimes.com ONE summer day 14 years ago, when I was a new cardiology fellow, my colleagues and I were discussing the case of an elderly man with worsening chest pains who had been transferred to our hospital to have coronary bypass surgery. We studied the information in his …
Read More »Doctors Go Online for Medical Information, Too
AMY DOCKSER MARCUS Wall Street Journal Beyond medical literature; families’ experiences with rare conditions Doctors who treat children with rare conditions sometimes seek guidance from online chat groups where families relate their experiences with the disorders. While gleaning medical information from the Internet is often considered unreliable, doctors may find …
Read More »World’s First Mobile APP to Prevent Physician Burnout
Dike Drummond MD www.prnewswire.com “The epidemic of physician burnout must stop. We’ve packed 1547 hours of one-on-one physician coaching experience into the “Burnout Proof” Mobile APP, so the videos, audios and handouts inside are available to any physician 24/7. This is everything we should have learned in residency about stress …
Read More »Blood Test For Early Stage Pancreatic Cancer Looks Promising
Catharine Paddock PhD www.medicalnewstoday.com A study that successfully differentiated patients with pancreatic cancer from those with another pancreatic disease using a new biomarker, could lead to a blood test that detects pancreatic cancer early enough for curative surgery to be feasible. Pancreatic cancer has a very poor survival rate and ranks …
Read More »When Doctors Don’t Talk to Doctors
By ALLISON BOND http://well.blogs.nytimes.com I could tell my patient was dying. In the final stage of liver failure, she lay listlessly in her hospital bed, her skin ashen and her eyes dull. Intractable intestinal bleeding, likely related to her underlying disease, had landed her in the intensive care unit. Although all …
Read More »Physicians Have Responsibility To Help Families Make End-Of-Life Decisions
www.news-medical.net Contributor: Marissa Garey According to the Ambulatory Surgical Center of America (ASCOA), more than 60% of Americans would like their end-of-life preferences to be followed. Yet, granting this wish is difficult when the patient is unresponsive. While this topic is quite controversial, surrogates tend to seek guidance from a …
Read More »Physician, Nurse Practitioner Jobs Lead Healthcare Surge
By Zack Budryk Contributor: Marissa Garey Through the year 2022, employment is predicted to augment, particularly in the healthcare industry. Health-support occupations, such as nurse practitioners and physicians, will be in constant demand, consequently improving job security. The recovery of the country’s labor market brought about 217,000 job opportunities by May …
Read More »Should Old Doctors Be Forced To Retire?
Should old doctors be forced to retire? There is controversy regarding aging practitioners. It is questioned whether or not older physicians are capable of contributing to the overall goal of successfully meeting health demands. Regardless of age, physicians are held to high expectations: impressive education, current knowledge, and competency to …
Read More »Training Doctors To Talk About Vaccines Fails To Sway Parents
LISA ALIFERIS www.npr.org As more and more parents choose to skip vaccinations for their children, public health professionals and researchers have been looking at new ways to ease the concerns of parents who are hesitant. But that turns out to be tough to do. Studies have found that simply educating …
Read More »Painful Diagnosis: Doctors Must Be Frank, Even When The News Is Bad
www.post-gazette.com A troubling case before the state Supreme Court asks if parents can sue their doctor for not telling them about a fetus’ birth defects. An auxiliary issue is whether doctors have an obligation to disclose to patients the negative outcome of an examination or test. Presumably, ethics would demand …
Read More »Deaf Doctor Makes Patients Feel Heard
By Philip Zazove www.cnn.com When I was 4 years old, my mother and father received devastating news — I was deaf. It was the 1950s, a time when people with disabilities received few accommodations or support. A time long before any legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act was conceived, …
Read More »‘Door-To-Balloon’ Time Is Goal For Doctors At Blount Memorial
By Melanie Tucker www.thedailytimes.com How long is 45 minutes? If you’re stuck standing in line at the bank or waiting for your meal at a restaurant, 45 minutes can seem like forever, each moment drawing out like an eternity. But, in the grand scheme of life, 45 minutes is almost …
Read More »The Future Of Cardiology Will Be Shown In 3-D
CHRISTINA FARR www.npr.org How can you tell the difference between a good surgeon and an exceptional one? You could start by looking for the one who has the rare ability to visualize a human organ in three dimensions from little more than a scan. “The handful of the top surgeons …
Read More »Coded Talk About Assisted Suicide Can Leave Families Confused
APRIL DEMBOSKY www.npr.org Physician-assisted suicide is illegal in most states in the U.S. But there are gray areas where doctors can help suffering patients hasten their death. The problem is nobody can talk about it directly. This can lead to bizarre, veiled conversations between medical professionals and overwhelmed families. Doctors …
Read More »Carotid Artery Stenting Outcomes Vary Widely by Hospital
Salynn Boyles www.healthleadersmedia.com In-hospital outcomes among patients undergoing CAS in the US varied fourfold after adjusting for differences in patient risk factors in an analysis of data from a large, nationwide stenting registry. From MedPage Today. In-hospital outcomes among patients undergoing carotid artery stenting (CAS) in the U.S. varied fourfold after …
Read More »Here’s A Radical Approach To Big Hospital Bills: Set Your Own Price
JAY HANCOCK NPR In the late 1990s you could have taken what hospitals charged to administer inpatient chemotherapy and bought a Ford Escort econobox. Today, average charges for chemo, not even counting the price of the anti-cancer drugs, are enough to pay for a Lexus GX sport-utility vehicle. Hospital prices …
Read More »Physician Burnout Heavily Influenced by Leadership Behaviors
Alexandra Wilson Pecci http://healthleadersmedia.com Researchers find a “very strong relationship between [physician] satisfaction and burnout and the leadership behaviors of physician supervisors” in large healthcare organizations. Physician burnout is prevalent throughout the U.S. healthcare system—experienced by nearly half (46%) of physicians, according to data published in JAMA last year. But effective leadership …
Read More »Latest Tool For Neurosurgeons: Virtual Reality Headsets
www.cbsnews.com Virtual reality headsets are already revolutionizing the way people experience video games: put on a pair of goggles and you can travel anywhere from outerspace to the battlefield. But gamers aren’t the only ones this technology can transport to new worlds, reports CBS News’ Kara Finnstrom, only on “CBS …
Read More »The Reality of Virtual Care
Scott Mace www.healthleadersmedia.com Virtual care is not a new idea. Videoconferencing dates back several decades. Remote monitoring in ICUs began more than a decade ago. Telestroke and remote behavioral health programs have been on the radar in many settings for years. But two major factors have given virtual care a …
Read More »Brain-Dead Woman Kept Alive 54 Days Delivers Baby Boy
www.foxnews.com Doctors in Nebraska prolonged the life of a brain dead woman for 54 days so she could deliver a baby boy named Angel. Karla Perez, 22, died two days after the delivery, the Washington Post reported late Friday. Angel weighed just 2 pounds, 12.6 ounces at birth. The last time a …
Read More »Why The Urologist Is Usually A Man, But Maybe Not For Long
PONCIE RUTSCH www.npr.org If you need to see a urologist, the odds are very good that your doctor will be a man. Only about 8 percent of the practicing urologists are female, according to a poll from WebMD that includes gender distribution among medical specialties. The fact that there are …
Read More »The prognosis for U.S. healthcare? Better than you think.
Erika Fry fortune.com Bernard J. Tyson, chairman and chief executive of Kaiser Permanente—the $56 billion non-profit health insurer and hospital operator—is more optimistic about America’s healthcare system than he’s ever been. That’s saying something, given that the fate of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance pending a …
Read More »One Doctor’s Quest to Save the World With Data
DANIELLE VENTON www.wired.com IN RWANDA, PEOPLE have to deal with all kinds of threats to their health: malaria, HIV/AIDS, severe diarrhea. But in late 2012, Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s Minister of Health, realized her country’s key health enemy was something far more innocuous. The thing causing the most harm to her people, the leading …
Read More »New Measles Vaccine is Needle-Free
BY MAGGIE FOX www.nbcnews.com Scientists have formulated a needle-free vaccine against measles and say the little stick-on patch could be the answer to fighting measles — and perhaps other diseases such as polio, too. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls the patch a “game-changer” and is helping the team at Georgia …
Read More »Admitted to Your Bedroom: Some Hospitals Try Treating Patients at Home
By DANIELA J. LAMAS, M.D. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com When Martin Fernandez came into Mount Sinai Hospital’s emergency room one recent afternoon, with high fever and excruciating abdominal pain, he and his family were asked an unexpected question. Mr. Fernandez, 82, would have to be officially admitted to receive intravenous antibiotics for his urinary …
Read More »Would Doctors Be Better If They Didn’t Have To Memorize?
JOHN HENNING SCHUMANN www.npr.org Poor old Dr. Krebs. His painstaking Nobel-winning work on cellular metabolism, called the Krebs cycle, has made him the symbol for what’s ailing medical education. “Why do I need to know this stuff?” medical students ask me. “How many times have you used the Krebs Cycle lately?” senior doctors jokingly …
Read More »Doctors Cry Too
Linda Girgis, MD www.physiciansweekly.com Since entering medical school, I wished to be a pediatrician. There was nothing more noble in my mind than curing sick children and babies. That dream changed suddenly one night on my surgery rotation. It was early evening, when a Code-22 rang out over the hospital …
Read More »For The New Doctors We Need, The New MCAT Isn’t Enough
Dan Diamond www.forbes.com Americans want a lot from our doctors. We want caring bedside manner, effective communication, up-to-date knowledge, and finely honed clinical skills. We ideally want more than five minutes to spare in a visit. We want doctors who treat the whole person, not just the illness; doctors who …
Read More »Uber for Doctors: 5 Apps Bring Back House Calls
Marine Cole www.thefiscaltimes.com Silicon Valley is trying to revolutionize the way Americans get medical care by bringing doctors directly to your phone, but another fast-growing trend is also reminiscent of the old-fashioned doctor house calls. Several startups are promising to deliver a doctor to you usually within the next hour …
Read More »Diversity in Medicine
Emily Hause www.medschoolpulse.com Hello my diverse readers! When I applied to medical school, I had this idea in my mind that there was some sort of perfect pre-med applicant prototype that schools had in mind. All I had to do to be accepted was become or fit into that perfect pre-med mold. …
Read More »Do Wearable Devices in Hospitals Pose Security Threats?
By Aleksandr Peterso www.physiciansnews.com Wearable tech has painted itself as the future of innovation for many different industries, but perhaps most notably for healthcare. Even now, wearable devices are seeing increased use at care facilities to track patient status, reduce response times, and improve care coordination. But wearable technology is still …
Read More »FDA Ponders Putting Homeopathy To A Tougher Test
ROB STEIN www.npr.org It’s another busy morning at Dr. Anthony Aurigemma’s homeopathy practice in Bethesda, Md. Wendy Resnick, 58, is here because she’s suffering from a nasty bout of laryngitis. “I don’t feel great,” she says. “I don’t feel myself.” Resnick, who lives in Millersville, Md., has been seeing Aurigemma for years …
Read More »When Keeping A Secret Trumps The Need For Care
MAANVI SINGH www.npr.org Dana Lam was insured under her parent’s health plan until the end of 2014, thanks to a provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows young adults to stay on family health insurance until they turn 26. The arrangement worked out well until she needed treatment …
Read More »Trauma Surgeons: Lifeguards at the Shallow End?
Bruce Davis, MD www.physiciansweekly.com There was a time, during my training and early in my career when the trauma surgeon was the fighter pilot of the surgical world. We were the Top Knives, the Master Surgeons, of our respective hospitals. Certainly the surgeons who trained me in the craft embodied …
Read More »5 Recruiting Tips To Fight The Looming Physician Shortage
By Sean West www.fiercehealthcare.com Increased demand for services will only exacerbate the problems expected by the shortage of close to 90,000 physicians in the next 10 years, according to a new survey that examines 2015 trends in healthcare recruitment. Despite the factors behind the shortage–including the millions of newly insured consumers under the Affordable …
Read More »Hospital Diversity Improvement Plans, Goals: 16 Things To Know
Written by Shannon Barnet www.beckershospitalreview.com While job areas related to patient care have experienced a long history of diversification, the same cannot be said of healthcare jobs in upper management, according to a report from the NAACP. Some hospitals and health systems have created programs to monitor diversity procurement but, overall, diversity …
Read More »Figure 1 App Is Like an ‘Instagram for Doctors’
By LIZ NEPORENT http://abcnews.go.com Call it socialized medicine for the digital age. Figure 1, a new smart phone app lets doctors and other medical professionals from all over the world swap pictures and info about their cases. The app as has been described as “Instagram for doctors,” a phrase its founder and …
Read More »Age and the Trauma Surgeon
Bruce Davis, MD www.physiciansweekly.com I’m on day 5 of an 8-day run of Port-and-Starboard trauma call (Navy talk for every other night) and am feeling my age. There was a time when I could do this for weeks at a time and still have the energy to play or go …
Read More »Will A Transplanted Hand Feel Like His Own? Surgery Raises Questions
ROB STEIN www.npr.org When Kevin Lopez opens the door to his Greenbelt, Md., apartment to greet a visitor he’s never before met, he initially conceals his right hand. “I’m self-conscious, definitely, about my right hand,” he says. But eventually Lopez relaxes. “I was born like this,” he says. “As you …
Read More »The Healing Power of Your Own Medical Records
By STEVE LOHR www.nytimes.com Steven Keating’s doctors and medical experts view him as a citizen of the future. A scan of his brain eight years ago revealed a slight abnormality — nothing to worry about, he was told, but worth monitoring. And monitor he did, reading and studying about brain …
Read More »How Stone-Age Blades Are Still Cutting It In Modern Surgery
By Peter Shadbolt www.cnn.com Ever had a headache so big, you felt like drilling a hole in your head to let the pain out? In Neolithic times trepanation — or drilling a hole into the skull — was thought to be a cure for everything from epilepsy to migraines. It …
Read More »Doctors With Cancer Push California To Allow Aid In Dying
ANNA GORMAN www.npr.org Dan Swangard knows what death looks like. As a physician, he has seen patients die in hospitals, hooked to morphine drips and overcome with anxiety. He has watched death drag on for weeks or months as terrified relatives stand by helplessly. Recently, however, his thoughts about how …
Read More »The Doctor’s Rituals
By MIKKAEL A. SEKERES, M.D. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com Every night when I put my 6-year-old son to sleep, we go through the same routine. At his request, I carry him upstairs, slung over my shoulder like a “sack of potatoes.” Then, I sit on his bed while he changes into his pajamas; …
Read More »Thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon Potion Kills MRSA Superbug
By Nick Thompson and Laura Smith-Spark www.cnn.com It might sound like a really old wives’ tale, but a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon potion for eye infections may hold the key to wiping out the modern-day superbug MRSA, according to new research. The 10th-century “eyesalve” remedy was discovered at the British Library in a leather-bound volume of Bald’s Leechbook, widely …
Read More »Oldest Evidence Of Breast Cancer Found In Egyptian Skeleton
Reporting by Mahmoud Mourad; editing by John Stonestreet http://news.yahoo.com A team from a Spanish university has discovered what Egyptian authorities are calling the world’s oldest evidence of breast cancer in the 4,200-year-old skeleton of an adult woman. Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said the bones of the woman, who lived at …
Read More »How A Boy Survived 1 Hour, 41 Minutes Without A Pulse
By GILLIAN MOHNEY http://abcnews.go.com A 22-month-old toddler was revived after falling into a frigid creek near his home and undergoing 101 minutes of CPR — a recovery that one doctor said may have been made possible by a type of “suspended animation.” Gardell Martin was pulled from a nearly frozen creek …
Read More »Increasing Use Of Minimally Invasive Surgery ‘Would Avert Thousands Of Post-op Complications’
Written by Honor Whiteman www.medicalnewstoday.com A new study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine claims that health care costs and the number of postoperative complications across the US could be significantly reduced if hospitals were to increase their use of minimally invasive surgery for some common procedures. Lead researcher Dr. …
Read More »Needle Stick-Injured Ebola Doctor Free Of Virus After Vaccination
Markus MacGill www.medicalnewstoday.com After receiving an experimental emergency vaccine, a doctor from the US who had received a needle stick injury, and so put at high risk of infection while working in an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone, has been found clear of the virus. The physician, given the …
Read More »Ancient Egyptians Had State-Supported Health Care
Anne Austin www.theweek.com We might think of state supported health care as an innovation of the 20th century, but it’s a much older tradition than that. In fact, texts from a village dating back to Egypt’s New Kingdom period, about 3,100-3,600 years ago, suggest that in ancient Egypt there was a …
Read More »Physicians, Patients Overestimate Risk of Death From Acute Coronary Syndrome
www.sciencedaily.com Both physicians and patients overestimate the risk of heart attack or death for possible acute coronary syndrome (ACS) as well as the potential benefit of hospital admission for possible ACS. A survey of patient and physician communication and risk assessment, along with an editorial, were published online last week …
Read More »Doctors as Journalists: Conflict of Interest?
www.physiciansweekly.com On Gary Schwitzer’s website healthnewsreview.org, a debate about the role of physicians who work as journalists took place. It was sparked by an NBC News report on the changing of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to its new name—Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID). The report featured commentary by Dr. Natalie Azar, …
Read More »A Sheriff And A Doctor Team Up To Map Childhood Trauma
LAURA STARECHESKI www.npr.org The University of Florida’s Dr. Nancy Hardt has an unusual double specialty: She’s both a pathologist and an OB-GYN. For the first half of her career, she brought babies into the world. Then she switched — to doing autopsies on people after they die. It makes perfect …
Read More »FDA Approves CPR Devices That May Increase Chance Of Surviving Cardiac Arrest
www.fda.gov The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the ResQCPR System, a system of two devices for first responders to use while performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on people whose hearts stop beating (cardiac arrest). The devices may improve the patient’s chances of surviving cardiac arrest. The Centers for Disease Control …
Read More »Dancing In The OR
Bruce Davis, MD www.physiciansweekly.com I was not having a good morning. I had just come off Trauma call—a difficult 24hr shift that was finally behind me. I had finished a long week of rounding on the Trauma Service and had turned the patients over to Sid, who would be the …
Read More »Keeping Your Hair in Chemo
TARA PARKER-POPE http://well.blogs.nytimes.com Hair loss is one of the most obvious side effects of cancer treatment. Now, a growing number of breast cancer patients are freezing their scalps as a way to preserve their hair during chemotherapy. The hair-saving treatment, widely used in Europe, requires a specialized frozen cap worn …
Read More »Psychedelic Drug Use ‘Does Not Increase Risk For Mental Health Problems’
David McNamee www.medicalnewstoday.com An analysis of data provided by 135,000 randomly selected participants – including 19,000 people who had used drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms – finds that use of psychedelics does not increase risk of developing mental health problems. The results are published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. …
Read More »CDC Investigates Rise in Opioid-Addicted Newborns
Diana Phillips www.medscape.com Nearly all of the infants with confirmed cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome identified in three Florida hospitals during a 2-year period had documented in utero opioid exposure. Yet only 10% of their mothers received or were referred for drug addiction rehabilitation or counseling at the time of …
Read More »Schools Reconsidering How Med School Applicants Are Evaluated
www.ama-assn.org The medical education overhaul continues—and not just with undergraduate med ed. Changes being launched now in medical schools are touching graduate medical education and pre-medical education, seeking to better prepare doctors for a health care system that is constantly changing. Academic physicians covered these innovations in an online video panel Tuesday …
Read More »A 12-Year-Old Girl Shows Us What It’s Really Like To Face TB
NSIKAN AKPAN www.npr.org How do you turn a contagious disease like tuberculosis from a set of statistics — 9 million cases, 1.5 million deaths a year — into a human story? One way is by making a 4 1/2 minute video. “Thembi Jakiwe: Strength of a Woman” is the story of a …
Read More »On the Case at Mount Sinai, It’s Dr. Data
STEVE LOHR www.nytimes.com Jeffrey Hammerbacher is a number cruncher — a Harvard math major who went from a job as a Wall Street quant to a key role at Facebook to a founder of a successful data start-up. But five years ago, he was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, …
Read More »Family of Brain-Dead Pregnant Woman Now Fighting to Change State Law
GILLIAN MOHNEY http://abcnews.go.com A family that had to go to court to get a brain-dead woman taken off life support is now fighting to change Texas law so other families won’t have to go through the same ordeal. The family of Marlise Munoz is working with Texas lawmakers to craft a new …
Read More »Can Patients Chew Gum Immediately Before Surgery?
www.physiciansweekly.com A study presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) meeting in October of last year found that patients who chew gum in the immediate preoperative period may safely undergo surgery. The authors, based at the University of Pennsylvania, found that gum chewing increases saliva production and the volume of …
Read More »Doctors Perceived As More Compassionate When Giving Patients More Optimistic News
Honor Whiteman www.medicalnewstoday.com When receiving information about treatment options and prognosis, advanced cancer patients favor doctors who provide more optimistic information and perceive them to be more compassionate when delivering it. This is according to a new study published in JAMA Oncology. The study was conducted by researchers from the University …
Read More »Alzheimer’s Protein ‘Can Accumulate In Young People’s Brains’
Catharine Paddock PhD www.medicalnewstoday.com Brains of older people with Alzheimer’s disease show characteristic abnormal clusters of faulty protein called amyloid. Now, for the first time, scientists have discovered amyloid can begin to accumulate in the brains of people as young as 20. The finding is surprising because it was thought …
Read More »How A Group Of Lung Cancer Survivors Got Doctors To Listen
KATHERINE HOBSON www.npr.org A group of lung cancer survivors was chatting online last May about what they thought was a big problem: Influential treatment guidelines published by a consortium of prominent cancer centers didn’t reflect an option that several people thought had saved their lives. They wanted to change that. …
Read More »Can Family Secrets Make You Sick?
LAURA STARECHESKI www.npr.org In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti, now director of the California Institute of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, discovered something potentially revolutionary about the ripple effects of child sexual abuse. He discovered it while trying to solve a very different health problem: helping severely obese people lose weight. Felitti, …
Read More »These Doctors Want To Tell You You’re Stupid If You Don’t Vaccinate Your Kids [VIDEO]
Jonathan Harris whatstrending.com Jimmy Kimmel made a good point. If you don’t believe what a doctor tells you about vaccines, why would you believe him about anything else? If he’s likely to intentionally poison your children so that he can line the pockets of GlaxoSmithKline, why would you go there …
Read More »Woman Becomes Obese After Fecal Transplantation From Overweight Donor
Honor Whiteman www.medicalnewstoday.com A new case report published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases reveals that a woman who was treated for a recurrent Clostridium difficile infection with the gut bacteria of an overweight donor quickly and unexpectedly gained weight herself following the procedure. The authors say the case suggests doctors should avoid …
Read More »Most Doctors Give In to Requests by Parents to Alter Vaccine Schedules
CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS www.nytimes.com A wide majority of pediatricians and family physicians acquiesce to parents who wish to delay vaccinating their children, even though the doctors feel these decisions put children at risk for measles, whooping cough and other ailments, a new survey has found. Physicians who reluctantly agreed said they did so …
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