February 7th, 2010 by GruntDoc in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: Academic Centers, Community Hospitals, Emergency Medicine, Moonlighting, Real World, Residency, Training
1 Comment »
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*
February 7th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News
Tags: Disease Specific Discussions, Health Tweeder, Petri Dish, Pixels and Pills, Technology, Twitter
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The number of health-related Twitter users or discussions is still growing and while it’s easy to find Twitter messages focusing on a medical condition or specialty (search.twitter.com), visualizing these tiny bits of information is incredibly hard. Health Tweeder, managed by Pixels&Pills, aims to fill this gap.
Using the laboratory that is social media and Twitter, we’re visually and metaphorically using petri dishes to culture cells of dialogue on specific disease states. Each cell in a Petri dish represents a distinct tweet that has been gathered using relevant disease search terms, hashtags, and people we’ve identified. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
February 7th, 2010 by Michael Sevilla, M.D. in Better Health Network, True Stories
Tags: Cerumen, Cerumen Impaction, Ear Wax, Family Medicine, Hearing Loss, Otitis Externa, Q-Tips, Swimmer's Ear
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“Hey doc,” the patients says, “I think I got wax in my ear.” I reply, “Well, that makes it hard to hear me, then, huh?” “WHAT?” – the patient yells. Oh yeah, I say to myself. “I’ve been having this ever since I was a kid. Every few months, I need my ears cleaned out.” So, I look in there, and it’s the most amount of wax I’ve seen in a long time.
“Sir, do you use q-tips to clean our your ears?” I ask the patient. “Well, yeah, I think I’ve been doing a good job at keeping things clean, don’t you think?” “Well, I wouldn’t recommend that because it looks like you’ve been pushing the wax further in there.” “WHAT?”
So, we’re able to get some of the wax out of there only to find a lot of redness and irritation in the ear canal. “Doc, I still can’t hear. Are you sure that you got all the wax out of there?” “Well, sir, there is no more wax in there now. It looks like there is an infection underneath, and that’s what causing the problem now.” “WHAT?” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Doctor Anonymous*
February 6th, 2010 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: ACP, Costs, healthcare, Medical Ethics, New Ethics, Physicians Charter, Professionalism Charter
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A few days ago Mr. Doherty (who is also the ACP’s Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs and Public Policy), graciously agreed to engage in this discussion, and promised to do so after consulting with the ACP’s Committee on Ethics, Professionalism, and Human Rights.
DrRich had hoped that Mr. Doherty would reply with a post on his ACP blog, which (since it likely has a vastly greater readership than the CRB), would more effectively give this topic some much-needed airing – and in particular, might engage some of the ACP’s membership (specialists in internal medicine) in this important discussion. DrRich was disappointed, then, when the reply came today in the form of a comment, which was tacked on to a long queue of reader’s comments at the end of DrRich’s posting.
DrRich was also very disappointed by the content of the reply which, fundamentally, was: This is a non-issue, and even if it was an issue, it’s now a settled issue. (So go away.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
February 6th, 2010 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: ACP, ACP Advocate, Bob Doherty, Covert Rationing, Distributive Justice, DrRich, Medical Ethics, New Ethics, Physician's Charter On Ethics, Societal Beneficence
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In his last post, and not without some little trepidation over the propriety of doing so, DrRich offered to enter into a “constructive dialogue” with Bob Doherty of the ACP Advocate Blog, regarding the important topic of medical ethics. What occasioned this offer was the fortuitous selection of each of us as finalists in the 2009 Medical Weblog Award Competition, in the category of Best Health Policy/Ethics Blog.
Ever since the inception of the Covert Rationing Blog (and even before that, in his book) DrRich has taken strong exception to the new code of “medical ethics for a new millennium,” formally promulgated in 2002 by the American College of Physicians and several of its equally respected sister organizations (a grouping DrRich has termed the Millennialists). And when he saw that the ACP Advocate Blog (an official publication of a principle component of the Millennialists) had become a co-finalist for a Weblog Award in the category of medical ethics, DrRich could not resist offering to engage in a discussion over same. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
