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How Much Are Your Organs Worth?

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I don’t plan to sell my organs on eBay, but as organ transplantation, lack of donors, and illegal organ trafficking gets more and more serious, this infographic comes just in time. It provides some interesting answers to questions like, “How much does a liver cost in South Korea?” and “How many patients are waiting for transplants?” Click on the image for the original larger version:

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

The Pain Scale, Animated And Narrated

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Here is another blogger’s take on the ubiquitous hospital pain scales. You’ve probably seen some version of this chart before. You may also have noticed how inadequate it is at helping you. Based on the faces, this is my interpretation of the chart:

0: Haha! I’m not wearing any pants!

2: Awesome! Someone just offered me a free hot dog!

4: Huh. I never knew that about giraffes.

6: I’m sorry about your cat, but can we talk about something else now? I’m bored.

8: The ice cream I bought barely has any cookie dough chunks in it. This is not what I expected and I am disappointed.

10: You hurt my feelings and now I’m crying!

None of that is medically useful and it doesn’t even have all the numbers, so I made a better one with all the numbers. Read more »

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

Secondhand Carbs

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From the medical cartoons of Randy Glasbergen:

Secondhand carbs

When Doctors Consider A Career Change

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What awaits some physicians who decide to quit medicine:

A cartoon guide to non clinical jobs for doctors

Source: A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor

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

Examine A Hand, Foreshadow A Future

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Back to the subject at hand.

To those who are relatively new to this blog, one of the most popular…uh…tolerated series of posts has been my series on the physical exam. If you haven’t done so already, you may want to go back and read the posts to get in the proper mindset (or destroy enough brain cells).

Astute readers will note that doctors are not the only professionals to examine the hand.

Long before we knew anything about carpal tunnel syndrome or the thenar eminence, we had Madam Linda and her cohorts looking at the hand for signs of what the future will bring for the individual that happens to be connected to the hand in question. Just as stars and planets can have a peculiar interest as to whether a person will run into money, the lines on a person’s hand can foreshadow a person’s future. 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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