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 »In Bid For Stricter Vaccine Rules, Officials Grapple With Decades-Old Distrust
APRIL DEMBOSKY www.npr.org California is on the brink of passing a law that would require nearly all children to be vaccinated in order to attend school. The bill has cleared most major hurdles, but public health officials have grappled with a strong, vocal opposition along the way. There’s actually a …
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 »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 »Surgeons Who Can’t Perform Open Surgery
www.physiciansweekly.com Now I’m really worried about surgical education. Here’s why: A friend told me that a new attending on his staff was having some problems. Although the young surgeon was a graduate of 5 years of general surgery plus 2 years of fellowship, he was unable to do an inguinal …
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 »How A Claim That A Childhood Vaccine Prevents Leukemia Went Too Far
TARA HAELLE www.npr.org Sometimes a story takes odd turns as you report it. Every once in while it goes off the rails. That’s what happened as I reported on a new study purporting to explain how a childhood vaccine helps prevent leukemia. The experience reaffirmed the lessons I’ve learned in …
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 »Sepsis, A Wily Killer, Stymies Doctors’ Efforts To Tame It
Richard Harris www.npr.org If you ran down the list of ailments that most commonly kill Americans, chances are you wouldn’t think to name sepsis. But this condition, sometimes called blood poisoning, is in fact one of the most common causes of death in the hospital, killing more people than breast …
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 »Long-Term Data on Complications Adds to Criticism of Contraceptive Implant
By RONI CARYN RABIN www.nytimes.com When a new contraceptive implant came on the market over a decade ago, it was considered a breakthrough for women who did not want to have more children, a sterilization procedure that could be done in a doctor’s office in just 10 minutes. Now, 13 years …
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 »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 »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 »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 »What Could Go Wrong When Doctors Treat Their Own Kids?
JOHN HENNING SCHUMANN www.npr.org Famed doctor and medical educator William Osler once said, “A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.” What, I wonder, does that say about us doctors who treat our own kids? This past winter, my daughter got the flu. She was miserable: …
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 »Time To Announce UV Tanning ‘Causes’ Skin Cancer, Doctors Urge
Written by Catharine Paddock PhD www.medicalnewstoday.com Doctors and researchers writing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine argue it is time to push the message that UV tanning causes – as opposed to merely being associated with – skin cancer. They note that when the US Surgeon General finally announced that smoking causes lung …
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 »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 »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 »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 »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 »Childhood Sleep Disorders: How Do They Affect Health And Well-being?
Honor Whiteman www.medicalnewstoday.com Although around 25-40% of children and adolescents in the US experience some form of sleep disorder, such conditions are often overlooked, with a lack of realization of just how important a good night’s sleep is for a child’s present and later-life health. In line with National Sleep …
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 »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, …
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