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Listen to Your Psychiatrist, Uncle Sam

uncle-sam Dear Uncle Sam:

I know it’s been a rough week. I’m sure you’re grieving the lost of life at Fort Hood just like the rest of us, but I’m compelled to write you this letter. I hope you take it in the spirit in which it is meant.

I read an article at Salon.com today that made me wonder about your judgement. Since when did you stop listening to your doctors? The article was about Dr. Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who wanted to help troops before they went postal on military bases. Uncle Sam, Dr. Manion use to work for you at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Then he got fired. Why did you give Dr. Manion the boot for stating the obvious? He pointed out that troops at Camp Lejeune are getting bullied by superiors and dumped into an overwhelmed mental health care system when they asked for psychiatric help. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Nurse Ratched's Place*

Trapped In Family Medicine, Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Prologue
This is not news: your primary care provider (PCP) has been listed on the endangered species list. Harvard Medical School has decided to no longer train primary care physicians – they are too quaint and old fashioned. Estimates show that for every seasoned PCP leaving primary care (which they are doing in larger numbers), it will take 1.7 PCPs to replace them due to expectations of shortened work hours and believing that life style and balance are deservedly theirs over a grinding 60+ hour work week.

Nothing PCPs do to reinvent ourselves frees us from the singular patient question on which the entire primary care patient-doctor relationship hinges: “Doc, are you still a ‘preferred provider’?”  Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the plight of the PCP and even our day-to- day health care under a “family system” lens and re-examine the relationships from the perspective of the family therapist.
Read more »

Pregnant, Diabetic, And Gaining Weight

BSparl is getting bigger.  (And so am I.)

The BSparl at 16 weeks, 2 days

I spent a lot of time planning this pregnancy, starting from back in 2003 when I decided to go on an insulin pump.  And even though preparation didn’t begin in earnest until Chris and I were married, having a child has always been something I’ve wanted with my whole heart.  So I read up on what to expect, and what to do to help improve my diabetes control, and what prenatal vitamins to take.

What I didn’t do much research on was the actual pregnancy itself. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Board Certification Standards: Should They Be Lowered?

This post at The Central Line caught my eye:

Texas Recognizes ABPS Certification

The Texas Medical Board ruled on Oct. 20 that physicians certified by the American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS) could advertise themselves as board certified to the public.

The ABPS is the certifying body of the American Association of Physician Specialties (AAPS). The ABPS sponsors 17 boards of certification, including the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine (BCEM).

For a number of years, ABPS, in conjunction with AAPS, has been seeking recognition from various state medical boards, requesting that they allow physicians certified through an ABPS board to advertise themselves as board certified. The organizations were successful in Florida in 2002 but were recently rebuffed by the State of New York due to the lack of residency training as a qualification for ABPS board certification.

ACEP does not recognize BCEM as a certifying body in emergency medicine. Read more »

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

Quitting Smoking? Your Nicotine receptors Take Over A Month To Normalize

Nicotine withdrawal symptoms typically peak in the first week of abstinence and return to normal at around 3-4 weeks. It has long been known that certain nicotinic receptors (particularly the beta-2 subtype) are closely involved in nicotine addiction, and that smokers have a larger number of nicotine receptors in their brains than non-smokers. When the smoker quits, this large number of vacant, unstimulated receptors is believed to be involved in the resulting craving and distressing withdrawal (irritability, restlessness, depression, anxiety, poor concentration etc).

Earlier this year, a study published by Drs Kelly Cosgrove, Julie Staley and colleagues at Yale University, provided evidence on the time course of normalization of these receptors after quitting smoking. Read more »

This post, Quitting Smoking? Your Nicotine receptors Take Over A Month To Normalize, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

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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