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Emergency-Palliative Care: “We Can’t Save You”

An alert reader alerted me to this related piece in Slate: “We Can’t Save You: How To Tell Emergency Room Patients That They’re Dying.” An excerpt:

The ER is not an easy place to come to these realizations or assess their consequences. A handful of physicians are trying to change that. Doctors like Tammie Quest, board-certified in both palliative and emergency medicine, hope to bring the deliberative goal-setting, symptom-controlling ethos of palliative care into the adrenaline-charged, “tube ’em and move ’em” ER. Palliative/emergency medicine collaboration remains rare, but it’s growing as both fields seek to create a more “patient-centered” approach to emergency care for the seriously ill or the dying, to improve symptom management, enhance family support, and ensure that the patient understands the likely outcomes once they get on that high-tech conveyor belt of 21st-century emergency medicine.

Emergency medicine and palliative care-certified? That’s an interesting mix. We have a great palliative care service where I work (in fact, it just won the national “Circle of Life” award.) It makes a lot of sense to have a palliative care nurse stationed in (or routinely rounding) the ER, though. I think I’m going to suggest this to our hospice folks.

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

An Emergency Medicine Myth?

Eyebrow lacerationI’ve internalized all the dogma of medicine, for good and bad.

When I was an EMT, green as a twig in an ER, I learned the basics: For any wound with hair employ the razor, and get the hair away from the laceration so the doc could do a good closure.

So, employment week #3: Eyebrow laceration? Shaved that sucker clean off. ER doc freaked out, and I learned some medical dogma: Don’t shave eyebrows, they don’t grow back. Heard it later, too — all the way through training, in fact. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Baby Boomers Are Bypassing Primary Care

Office-based practices are focusing increasingly on patients 45 and older, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2008, those 45 and older accounted for 57 percent of all office visits, compared to 49 percent in 1998. Prescriptions, scans and time spent with the doctor also became increasingly concentrated on those middle aged and older, according to data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Also, physician visits increasingly concentrated on medical and surgical specialists and less on care provided by primary care practitioners for those ages 45 and older. Furthermore, for patients ages 65 and older, the percentage of visits to primary care specialists decreased from 62 percent to 45 percent from 1978 to 2008, while the percentage of visits to physicians with a medical or surgical specialty increased from 37 percent to 55 percent. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Is That ER Doctor Packin’ A Smartphone Or A Revolver?

I have a new “smartphone.” It’s a Droid from Verizon. Pretty cool. I like what it can do, though it tends to enable me tendency to chronically check my email. I like the features, between ease of texting, voice dialing, etc.  But it’s big, compared to me dear departed flipphone, whose corpse lies in state in my pickup truck.

But I noticed one day, as I reached around my side, that the large phone now on my hip felt remarkably like my revolver. Odd feeling that. I was in public and I remember panicking, wondering if I had forgotten to conceal my concealed weapon for some reason.

And as I pondered this, I realized that both represent fundamental differences in the way we view individuality. Maybe it’s a stretch, but I’m a writer so I’m supposed to stretch. Read more »

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

A Coping Game For Healthcare Providers

Ever wonder how ICU nurses get through their daily grind? Why, with ICU Bingo, of course.

How does ICU Bingo work? It works just like regular bingo. Every nurse receives their own Bingo card with different ICU diagnoses. And every time they take care of one of these conditions, they get to “x” it out. Fill out a line or any other predetermined design pattern, and you are the ICU Bingo winner, and you win a prize.

This is quite similar to my 2010 March Madness Hospitalist Bracket, only in this case the game is Bingo. As you can see, this nurse has already cared for a GI bleed, a homeless man, a drug overdose, chest pain, DKA, alcohol withrawal, subdural hematoma, a prisoner, and someone with super-morbid obesity. That’s ICU medicine for you.

icu-bingo1

*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*

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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