Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Vaccination Rates For Health Care Workers At A Dismal Level

A 3D graphical representation of a generic influenza virion’s ultrastructure, by CDC/ Doug Jordan, M.A. Health care workers’ fear of flu shots has risen as an issue again.

Refusing flu vaccination has risen among health professionals again and again. And again. And again and again.

Vaccination rates for health care workers stands at 35%, which is “a dismal rate,” according to Margaret C. Fisher, MD, a pediatric disease subspecialist and the medical director of The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center. She spoke about vaccinating adults and health care workers at Internal Medicine 2011.

The issue is as annual as the flu itself, and this time, a physician at London’s Imperial College NHS Trust has jumped into the debate, tackling misinformation given within his country’s own health service. He said: “A very interesting question for me is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Handling One’s Emotions In A Survival Situation

Perhaps the greatest thrill in attending a summer meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) is listening to new, enthusiastic and exciting speakers. They bring new insights and opinions to numerous topics and discussions, which is an essential part of the educational process. This past summer, at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the WMS held in Snowmass, Colorado, Dr. Drew Watters from the Indiana University School of Medicine approached the audience with his observations about neurobiology and survival. It was an innovative approach to a very common topic within wilderness medicine. How does one account for and handle emotions in a time of stress, including the most stressful situation of all—namely, a survival situation? When is it better to think, rather than to react? The objectives of his presentation were to understand to a certain extent survival, the anatomy of thought and perception, the neurobiology of emotions, behavior, emotive and cognitive decisions, and implementation of interventions in situations dominated by emotion.

Anyone who has practiced wilderness medicine knows that bad things happen, sometimes despite the best preparations and intentions. People make bad decisions that can too often be characterized as dumb. If they follow with more bad decisions, the situation Read more »

This post, Handling One’s Emotions In A Survival Situation, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Is The Million Hearts Campaign All About The Money?

I don’t know what I was thinking with my last post about the Health and Human Services’ Million Hearts initiative. I thought the whole point of this program was to save money. At the time, I was less than optimistic that the government could acurately reach their goal given the problems with many of the principles behind their program. For instance, maybe it was just me, but how typing on an electronic medical record system would save those lives was lost on me.

But at the time, I had no idea this whole campaign was based on fear.

Watch this introductory video I found on the brand new Million Hearts website, all paid for (of course) with your tax payer dollars: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Diabetes: When Being “No Worse” Means Progress

“Everything looks good.  No progress is good, actually.  Means your eyes haven’t deteriorated any further in the last five months.”  Dr S, my eye doctor at the Joslin Clinic, ran her fingers across the keyboard, typing notes into my online file.

“So it’s the same as back in November?  When I moved from mild to moderate retinopathy?”

“Right.  Still non-proliferative, but the same.  Not worse, by any stretch.  We’re working with a few spots, a very small bit of leakage, but nothing I’d recommend treatment for, other than watching it closely.”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.  The fluorescent bulbs in the room were bright and ricocheting off the white walls, making me feel like I was in an avalanche of light. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Fear And The High Risk Patient

Every day, doctors do risky things for their patients, often because they have no other options. Today is such a day for me.

I don’t know how it will go, and because of privacy laws I really can’t tell you about the case, I’m sorry. (Nor will you get an epilogue, that’s not the point of this post). But let’s just say that any normal person would consider the case I’m about to perform very high risk because of the patient’s condition. Even though you tell people they could die and take care to mention that fact time and time again, you wonder if they really can comprehend the significance of what you’re saying – after all, there is a fine line between being reassuring in a time of crisis and telling it like it is. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles