“He gave me the look,” the patient said to my nurse as he walked out of the exam room.
My nurse laughed and said, “I had a feeling you’d get it today.”
What were they talking about? ”What look? I didn’t know I had a look!” I asked my nurse.
The patient tipped his chin down and looked at me over his glasses. My nurse laughed, pointing at the patient, “That one! Exactly! You give that look to me too!”
I was mystified. I don’t like lecturing people or acting like their parent. Patients do no harm to me when they gain weight, don’t take their medications, or eat a lot of Little Debbies. My job is not to get them to do everything I say, it is to give them enough information and motivation to do it for themself. I am the coach; they are the ones who have to go out on the field and play. I may be disappointed when they mess up, but it’s not my job to patronize them and wag my finger. Read more »
Last week’s CDC report, “Health, United States, 2009” confirms that Americans are increasingly turning to medications, scans, and procedures to improve their health. Exercising, eating right, and weight loss: not so much.
Don’t get me wrong. I love technology as much as the next guy. Maybe more. I’m writing this on a laptop while jetting from California to New York. My iPhone, Blackberry, and Kindle are all within ten feet of me. But my inner Luddite is starting to stir. Read more »
Scientists from RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan and the Institute of Neurology at University College London have discovered that the brains of macaque monkeys undergo significant development when they are taught how to use tools. This finding may imply that our advanced human brains got as big and powerful as they did thanks to using tools, rather than the other way around.
The researchers used a technique called voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to classify areas of brain tissue in their MRI images as grey matter, white matter, or cerebro-spinal fluid, and to compare the volume of each tissue at different stages of learning. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
In fact, according to the results of an online survey about sex, relationships, and sexual respect, 60 percent of young men and teen boys lie about sex. In November, 1,200 males ages 15-22 took the survey conducted by TRU, Seventeen magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Some of the findings include:
45 percent reported they were virgins;
60 percent admitted to lying about something related to sex: 30 percent lied about how far they have gone, 24 percent about their number of sexual partners, and 23 percent about their virginity status;
78 percent agreed there was “way too much pressure” from society to have sex;
57 percent of sexually active respondents reported having had unprotected sex; Read more »
It looks as if President Obama’s plans for a February 25 bipartisan summit on health care will move forward, even as Republican leaders continue to express reservations.
The kicker is that the President is asking the GOP to show how it would “put a stop to insurance company abuses, extend coverage to millions of Americans, get control of skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reduce the deficit” (italics added by me). Many Republicans don’t view expanding coverage as a principal goal of health care reform. Read more »
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…
From RIKEN Research:
