August 23rd, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion, Research
No Comments »
There’s so much weird and exciting cancer news this week, it’s hard to keep up!
Double-kudos to Andrew Pollack on his front-page and careful coverage in the New York Times of the hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (Hipec) technique that’s being used at some name-brand health care facilities to treat colon cancer.
First, he spares no detail in the Times describing the seemingly primitive, crude method:
….For hours on a recent morning at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Andrew Lowy painstakingly performed the therapy on a patient.
After slicing the man’s belly wide open, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
April 17th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion
No Comments »
Recently Ed Silverman of Pharmalot considers the case of a ghost-written medical text’s mysterious disappearance. The 1999 book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care,” (reviewed in a psychiatry journal here) came under scrutiny last fall when it became evident that the physician “authors” didn’t just receive money from a relevant drug maker, SmithKline Beecham; they received an outline and text for the book from pharmaceutical company-hired writers.
poster for the X-Files
Now the book’s listing is gone from the website of STI (Scientific Therapeutic Information), the company that provided the authorship “help.” I tried to get a copy of the handbook on Amazon.com, where it’s currently out-of-stock. The book is listed in the Library of Congress on-line catalog: #99015420.
I’m reminded of clinical handbooks I used all the time when I was practicing hematology and oncology. At the hospital, I’d get freebie, small-sized chemo regimen primers that conveniently fit into my white coat pocket. In retrospect, perhaps I didn’t adequately check the authors’ credentials on those mini-book sources. It was too easy to take that information and keep it at hand, literally, especially in the times before we had constant Web access. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
March 16th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion, Research
3 Comments »
Is anyone else tired of hearing about how important empathy is in the doctor-patient relationship? Every other day it seems a new study is talking about the therapeutic value of empathy. Enough already!
It’s not that I don’t believe that empathy is important — I do. I also believe the data that links physician empathy with improved patient outcomes, increased satisfaction, and better patient experiences.
A recent study released in Academic Medicine reported that “patients of physicians with high empathy scores were significantly more likely to have good control over their blood sugar as well as cholesterol, while the inverse was true for patients of physicians with low scores.”
Findings from this study by Hojat, et al. are consistent with a 2009 study by Rakel, et al. which found that among patients with the common cold, those with physicians displaying high empathy had a significantly shorter duration of illness and trend toward lesser severity of illness and higher levels of immune response compared to those patients whose physician displayed less empathy. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
July 30th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
No Comments »
Study painting, drama or the “soft” social sciences and you’ll probably be a pretty good doctor anyway. Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has been doing it for years and compared students in a special liberal arts admissions program to its traditional pre-med students.
For years, Mt. Sinai has admitted students from Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan, and Williams colleges based on a written application with personal essays, verbal and math SAT scores, high school and college transcripts, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews. No MCAT is required.
Students need to take one year of biology and one year of chemistry and maintain (swallow hard) a “B” average. They later get an abbreviated course in organic chemistry and medical physics. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
