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

Latest Posts

The Economics Of Medical Jargon

Many of the peculiar terms and phrases we’ve learned in medicine have found a new use in cyberspace, as titles of websites (consider 10 out of 10, The Central Line, or this blog — and that’s just emergency medicine sites).

But that’s the virtual world — what about the real world? I [recently] saw a couple of products that make me think medical parlance could sell physical products. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Blogborygmi*

Emergency Medicine Residency Doesn’t Prepare Docs For The Real World

Emergency Medicine News:
February 2010 – Volume 32 – Issue 2 – p 5, 24, 25, 26

Residents training in large urban centers typically see more than 200 patients a day. They have access to all subspecialty care, typically available 24 hours a day. Residents have around-the-clock access to angioplasty, interventional radiology, hand surgeons, neurosurgeons, and plastic surgeons. Most practice emergency medicine with cardiologists and neurologists in the building or a short phone call away. Decision-making is shared, and occurs with a relative surplus of information and opinions and in a milieu of shared risk.

In reality, though, these very large and highly-specialized EDs with Level I trauma comprise less than five percent of U.S. EDs, according to the American College of Surgeons. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Latest Interviews

Health Tips For Back-To-School

I was lucky enough to be asked by one of the local TV stations to talk about some back-to-school issues when it comes to health. I don t know about where you re at but most of the local schools around here started yesterday August rd Keeping up-to-date on immunizations…

Read more »

“Medical Self-Care” And The Doc Tom Interview

Next in our series of posts about our founder Doc Tom. Previous time capsules and Come ye economics buffs and algebra fans Get out your pencils and solve for x n and XX Whatever else the year XX is remembered for it will without a doubt go down in history…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

cardiaccath

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

- Dr. Val

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

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

A Biomedical Look At Spaceflight

Book review by Dan Buckland Dan Buckland is an editor at Medgadget and an MD PhD student at Harvard Med MIT whose thesis deals with diagnosing back injury in spaceflight using ultrasound. Mary Roach author of previous entertaining books Bonk a history of sex research and Stiff a history of…

Read more »

UTI and “Eat, Pray, Love”

I really didn t expect to like Eat Pray Love. In fact since its publication in I’d been avoiding it like the plague. Typical new-agey Oprah-y girly-book I thought. Nothing in it to speak to me. Then I saw the trailer for the movie and I was hooked probably because…

Read more »

Will Science Succeed With An Anti-Aging Revolution?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to prolong our lives and to keep us healthy right up to the end Ponce de León never found that Fountain of Youth but science is still looking. What are the chances science will succeed How’s it doing so far…

Read more »

See all book reviews »