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Cartoon: The Omnipresence Of Pharma Advertising

cardiaccath

Here’s a cartoon I created a few years back. Enjoy!

– Dr. Val

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

Dr. Val Tells ABC News About Hospital Errors And How To Avoid Them

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtC_8KJZrkI

I kick off this segment with a surprising twist: I describe a hospital error that I experienced as a patient in the ER of a famous academic medical center.  And yes, I give a shout out to Paul Levy at minute 5 for his courageous efforts to reduce infection rates at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Dr. Val Uses Limerick To Warn Internet Users To Consider The Source Of Their Health Information

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ebdGR3IZp8

For more information about this lecture, check out:

Meredith Gould’s blog post, A Tale of One Presentation

Science-Based Medicine’s, Mainstreaming Science-Based Medicine: A Novel Approach

ABC News: The ePatient Revolution

I recently spoke at the first annual ePatient Connections conference in Philadelphia. I’ll be discussing the ePatient revolution (patients participating in their healthcare decision-making using Internet tools) at ABC news channel 8 live this morning with Dave Lucas. During the segment I’ll be referring to several websites that people will want to check out. For those of you who saw the segment, welcome to my website!  Here are the links:

1. Doctors answer questions for free at MedHelp.org Did you know that 9 of the top 11 hospital centers in the country offer access to their physicians for free at MedHelp.org? As part of a PR effort, hospitals are volunteering their doctors’ time to make sure that ePatients can get their questions answered by a reputable source.

2. Identify those mystery pills. Thanks to David Hale at the NIH, a new pill identifier tool is now available online. It’s called “PillBox” and it will soon allow you to search its large pill database by describing the color, shape, and letter/number codes printed on the tablet. Eventually, you may even be able to take a photo of the mysterious pill and have PillBox automatically identify it for you! Today, unfortunately, photo resolution on most cell phones and cameras is not sufficient for this feature to work. Read more »

A Tale Of Two ePatients – Limerick By Dr. Val Jones

Today I presented 20 slides in 20 seconds each at the ePatient Connections conference in Philadelphia. It was in the new “Pecha Kucha” format whereby the presenter must encapsulate her thoughts very carefully as the slides advance automatically each 20 seconds.

I decided to do it as a Limerick, since timing could be more easily gaged that way. I wasn’t sure how the presentation would be received, but the crowd loved it and asked for a copy of my slide deck… so for you conference attendees who wanted it… here it is:

And here is what I was reading as the show advanced (the slides advanced every 2 verses). Enjoy! Read more »

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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