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UN’s Sex Education Guide Generates Opposition

The UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) proposed sex education guidelines are stirring up quite the controversy – before they are even published! I will give you one guess who is attacking them – oh come on, guess!

That is correct – conservative and religious groups are attacking the guidelines because of their portrayal of issues like sex education, abortion and homosexuality. Specifically, the guidelines describe sexual abstinence as only one of a range of choices available to young people to prevent disease and avoid pregnancy. The guidelines also dare to suggest that families discuss masturbation with their children, starting as young as five, but definitely with preteens.
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This post, UN’s Sex Education Guide Generates Opposition, was originally published on Healthine.com by Nancy Brown, Ph.D..

Nursing Tips To Prevent Medical Errors

teamThis post isn’t being written to frighten you or to cause you to mistrust hospitals.

It’s to make you aware that medical errors do occur, but there are steps that you can take to help prevent medical errors from happening.

First, some vital information

According to a recent investigation by the Hearst Corporation, a staggering 200,000 Americans will die each year from preventable medical errors and hospital infections.  This report comes ten years after the highly-publicized report, “To Err Is Human” which found 98,000 Americans were dying each year of medical errors.  Instead of the number of medical errors decreasing, it nearly doubled.
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*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*

What If Investment Advisers Managed Risk Like Physicians?

I have blogged extensively about why standard of care is an irresponsible measure of the threshold for determining negligence in medical care. Most recently, I blogged about it here and here. Imagine for a moment what capitalism would be like if your investment adviser was sued every time your investment value went down. Imagine what life would be like if they risked civil liability every time a bad outcome occurred. What if no laws were broken? What if an after the fact determination of negligence was based on a bad outcome?

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*This blog post was originally published at A Happy Hospitalist*

Defensive Medicine: Fear Of Law Suit Or Fear Of Being Wrong?

A thoughtful and (dare I say it) balanced look at medical malpractice in today’s NYT:

Malpractice System Breeds More Waste in Medicine – NYTimes.com

The debate over medical malpractice can often seem theological. On one side are those conservatives and doctors who have no doubt that frivolous lawsuits and Democratic politicians beholden to trial lawyers are the reasons American health care is so expensive. On the other side are those liberals who see malpractice reform as another Republican conspiracy to shift attention from the real problem. […]
The direct costs of malpractice lawsuits — jury awards, settlements and the like — are such a minuscule part of health spending that they barely merit discussion, economists say. But that doesn’t mean the malpractice system is working.

The fear of lawsuits among doctors does seem to lead to a noticeable amount of wasteful treatment. Amitabh Chandra — a Harvard economist whose research is cited by both the American Medical Association and the trial lawyers’ association — says $60 billion a year, or about 3 percent of overall medical spending, is a reasonable upper-end estimate. If a new policy could eliminate close to that much waste without causing other problems, it would be a no-brainer.

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*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*

Interesting Idea: Using Twitter To Answer Simple Healthcare Questions

Obviously not, but it can provide us with some new solutions. That’s why I wanted to share askCH, an interesting project.

AskCH is a one-of-a-kind healthcare tool. Send a healthcare cost or definition question in the proper format, and receive the answer with a link to find detailed information!

ask twitter

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*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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