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Heart Murmurs: A Cartoon Guide

Ever wonder what the six grades of heart murmurs really means?

A cartoon guide to heart murmurs

SOURCE: A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Hospitals And Social Media

Ed Bennett has been managed a huge and comprehensive list of U.S. hospitals using social media. In the newest update, Hospital accounts on LinkedIn are now also tracked in addition to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and blogs.

Current stats:

871 hospitals total

  • 421 YouTube channels
  • 679 Facebook pages
  • 648 Twitter accounts
  • 417 LinkedIn accounts
  • 94 blogs

You can also browse by state. The number of hospitals using each account is below:

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Teen Pregnancy Decline Is Likely As Low As It Will Go

Teen pregnancy rates have declined, but likely bottomed out, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Teen births dropped by a third between 1990 to 2005, but rose again in 2006 and 2007. The latest figures for 2008 show a decline of 2.4 percent, to 41.5 pregnancies per 1,000 teenagers. Experts told My Health News Daily/MSNBC the dropping rates have bottomed out, and that new strategies are needed to deglamorize teen pregnancy.

Teen birth rates were consistently highest in states across the South and Southwest, and lowest in the Northeast and upper Midwest. In 2008, state-specific teenage birth rates varied widely, from less than 25.0 per 1,000 15-19 year olds (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont), to more than 60.0 per 1,000 (Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas). Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Physician Referrals: Be Daring And Ask For A “Special Order”

As a specialist, one of the saddest truisms about practicing medicine in the private world has always been how little one’s clinical skills determines referrals. Unfortunately, as our present healthcare climate pushes “providers” to consolidate along the lines of major hospital networks this injustice will only worsen.

A decade or so ago when I started private practice it was obvious that referrals came to me because of my association with an established group. This association was essential, as one could have been the next Michael Jordan of electrophysiology, but referrals would still have gone along historic lines, to the favored group. It would have taken a Herculean effort, over years, to encroach upon such long-established referral patterns, etched over the bonds of rituals like Wednesday afternoon golf matches and dinner clubs.

Thus, few specialists start independently. You join an established group, do good work, form relationships and eventually, your quality becomes known. As it should be: Do good work and doctors will trust you with their patients. But yet, even the highest caliber specialists may fall prey to the easily accessible, affable (but unknown and untested) “new guy.” For enhancing referrals, availability and affability trump [actual] skills at least 90 percent of the time. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

The “Big Picture” Benefit Of Primary Care

Her eyes were bloodshot. She responded to my casual greeting of “How are you?” with a sigh. “How am I? I’m alive, I can tell you that much for sure.” She went on to describe a situation with her adult son who’s in a bad marriage and has struggled with addiction. She sighed again: “I feel weak. I don’t know if I can deal with this one. I’ve had so many hard things in my life already. When will it stop?”

“Many hard things” — yes, I agree with that assessment. She’s been my patient for more than a decade, and I’ve had a front row seat to her life. Her husband died a few years ago (while in his 40′s) of a longstanding chronic disease. Her daughter also has this disease, and has been slowly declining over time. I’ve watched her bear that burden, and have actually shared some in that load, being the doctor for the whole family.

I’ve also taken care of her parents, who had their own psychological problems. They were difficult patients for me to manage, and they had died long enough ago that I had forgotten that difficult chapter of her life. I’ve helped her with her emotional struggle from all of this. It was hard, but she hung on as best as she could. I know. I was there when it was happening.

To me, this is the biggest benefit of primary care. Yes, it’s nice to have a doctor who knows what’s going on with all of your other doctors. It’s good to have a doctor you are comfortable talking with about anything. It’s good to have someone without a financial stake in doing surgery, performing procedures, or ordering tests. But the unique benefit a long-term relationship with a primary care physician (PCP) is the amazing big picture view they have. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

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 Cartoon

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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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