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Writing Fellowships Available For US Medical Students And Residents

In case you hadn’t seen this announcement in my Twitter stream – there are a number of writing fellowships available for US medical students and residents. (Bloggers and those heavily engaged in social media are preferred.) Join The American Resident Project Writing Fellows in brainstorming about how to make the healthcare system better for future generations. Fellowships are awarded on a rolling basis. Opportunities for travel are included. From their website:

The American Resident Project is a platform for future physician leaders – medical students, residents and physicians newly in practice – to connect, explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery, and exchange these views with other health care providers and opinion leaders across the country.

Sponsored by ThinkWellPoint, The American Resident Project focuses on key issues affecting today’s frontline physician workforce, including:

  • New care coordination models
  • Strategies for patient engagement
  • Innovations in health technology
  • Join our growing community, lend your voice and share your ideas on these and other important topics shaping the future of health care delivery in America.

    I will be playing a mentorship role in the program going forward, and look forward to meeting some of my young Writing Fellows in the near future!

    Apply for the fellowship here.

    The Importance Of Promoting Good Science And Medicine In Journalism

    Sheril Kirshenbaum, research associate at the University of Texas Austin’s Center for International Energy & Environmental Policy, blogged this week under the headline, “Battle Hymn of the Science Journalist.” Excerpt:

    There are many excellent science journalists who inhabit the blogosphere and those mainstream news outlets that still feature science sections. These talented individuals want to share your story, your research, and they appreciate and value what you do.

    However, there are also a lot of horrible journalists making the rest of us look bad.. Writers who care less about getting it right, and more about trumping up controversy. Journalists whose headlines are notoriously misleading or false. Some Read more »

    *This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*

    When Is It Ok For Doctors To Write About Their Patients?


    I can’t find it now, but on one of our posts somewhere MovieDoc has stated that doctors can never ethically write about their patients since they are incapable of giving truly informed consent. Besides the obvious “huh?’ response I have to the idea that patients aren’t capable of making decisions like this, I question the basic assumption that this should never happen.

    The medical literature is replete with published anonymized case studies of patients with various maladies. For psychiatry in particular, early psychiatric classification was based on longitudinal descriptions of diseases. If it weren’t for the early case descriptions of Kaposi’s sarcoma in gay men published in the 1980’s, AIDS would not have been identified as a new disease. Case studies can and should be published to advance medical science. Read more »

    *This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*

    Patient Education At Its Best: An Example From Griffin Hospital

    A vital aspect of participatory medicine is helping patients learn how to participate. This week I saw a great example of someone who’s doing it right. Here’s the story, including the patient aid for download.

    Griffin Hospital's CHF booklet (click to download)We hear a lot about “patient-centered”: patient-centered care, patient-centered thinking, everything. Frankly, a lot of it strikes me as patient-centered paternalism: people mean well, but patients sense that the thinking didn’t happen while standing in patients’ shoes, because the advice, policies, and publications just don’t hit home. It’s like somebody guessed what you want, instead of knowing (because they’re like you).

    A couple of years ago I learned about Planetree, a terrific, small organization in Connecticut that’s been thinking from the patient’s point of view for thirty three years. (Yes, since 1978. Why are they not better known??)

    This week I attended a live webcast at a “Planetree designated” hospital, Griffin Hospital, in Derby CT, produced by HealthLeaders Media. When somebody’s truly patient centered, you rarely hear a puzzled “Do people really need that?” or “Isn’t this good enough?”, because they start with what patients want. (See founders’ story at bottom.)

    A great example is this booklet about CHF (congestive heart failure), which Griffin Hospital was kind enough to share. (Click the image to download the entire PDF, (1.7MB).) In my day job I did a bit of instructional development, so I can appreciate how well this was done: the “to-do” items are clearly presented, with NO extraneous explanation, and top-class use of icons and images. It’s all essential information, clearly presented, and nothing else. It’s what you need to do to succeed as a patient. Read more »

    *This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*

    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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