Patient satisfaction, as I wrote about previously, is being increasingly focused upon.
Doctors are often pressed for time, and appear rushed — which can potentially lead to unhappy patients.
I saw this small study showing that the simple act of sitting down while talking to patients can have a profound effect. Many doctors I know already do this, but now there’s some data to support sitting. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
Partisan rancor was one of the signatures of the recent healthcare reform debate. Can middle ground actually be sought? That’s a question that Eric Segall asks in a recent AOL News op-ed. As is the case in Washington, both sides are to blame. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
It’s well documented on this blog that the primary care shortage will only worsen once most of America has access to affordable health insurance.
As I wrote in a recent op-ed, not only will there a shortage of primary care physicians, but nurse practitioners and physician assistants won’t alleviate the problem either, mostly because they are also enticed by the lucrative allure of specialty practice. Enter the three-year primary care physician. Apparently, the fourth year of medical school was deemed expendable. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
Poor compliance with breastfeeding recommendations costs the nation at least $13 billion each year, with nearly all of the cost related to infant morbidity and mortality, according to a comprehensive economic analysis.
If 90% of new mothers followed guidelines for six months of exclusive breastfeeding for their children, an estimated 911 deaths would be prevented annually, said authors Melissa Bartick, MD, MSc, of Harvard Medical School, and Arnold Reinhold, MBA, of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, both in Boston. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
