May 25th, 2011 by admin in Health Tips
Tags: Contraception, Contraception Algorithm, iPad, iPhone, iPocketcards, Medical Students, OB/GYN, Patient Education
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“A baby crying is the best birth control.” – Anonymous
Despite a world full of crying babies, access to effective and timely contraception remains a pressing women’s health issue.
All students in the health professions learn the basics of contraception. Most health care professionals will prescribe contraception at some point in their training or clinical practice. Some clinicians make contraception and family planning the primary focus of their practice.
Contraception i-pocketcards is a resource for each of these health care providers – from the medical student working his first gynecologic clinic to the experienced ED doctor wondering which emergency contraceptive method to use in her patient with a history of DVT.
Reviewed on the iPod Touch. Also available on the iPhone and iPad.
If you visit a medical book store, you may notice the rack of medical pocket cards: EKG interpretation, 2011 Antibiotic guide, medical Spanish, and many others. As a medical student, these cards may have been your lifeline – they were mine. Likely among these cards is one related to prescribing contraception. Contraception i-pocketcards, like many good medical apps, is one that effectively replaces another white-coat-cluttering object. For $3.99, this app contains all of the information about contraception found on six pocket cards. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
May 25th, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Health Policy, Health Tips
Tags: Cochrane Collaboration, Depression, LinkedIn, Medication Adherence, Medication Compliance, Pay For Performance, Prescription Drugs, Vioxx
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You are sick with something-or-other and your doctor writes you a prescription for a medication. She briefly tells you what it’s for and how to take it. You go to the pharmacy, pick up the medication, go home and follow the instructions, right? I mean, how hard could it be?
Pretty hard, it appears. Between 20 percent to 80 percent of us – differing by disease and drug – don’t seem to be able to do it.
There are, of course, many reasons we aren’t. Drugs are sometimes too pricey, so we don’t fill the prescription. Or we buy them and then apply our ingenuity to making them last longer by splitting pills and otherwise experimenting with the dosage.
Some drugs have to be taken at specific times or under specific conditions, posing little challenge when you are taking only one. But it can be devilishly difficult to coordinate the green pill half an hour before breakfast, the yellow ones on an empty stomach four times a day and the orange one with a snack between meals. It’s complicated; we don’t understand. We’re busy; we forget. We’re sick; it’s confusing.
Some drugs produce uncomfortable side effects while others set off an allergic reaction. Every single day, we have to decide if the promised outcomes are worth the discomfort.
Kate Lorig, the developer of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program, has listened to thousands of people talk about the challenges they face in taking their medications as prescribed. “One of the reasons that folks do not take their meds is that they think they are not doing anything,” Lorig says. “This is especially true of medications that replace something that you no longer produce like thyroxin or medications for chronic conditions that help you get worse more slowly. The trajectory of a disease is not something one can usually sense, and people start feeling that their drugs are not making them better. Another problem is that people expect drugs to work at once like aspirin and antibiotics. Many drugs take days, weeks or even months for people to feel better. They lose patience.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
May 24th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Health Policy, Health Tips
Tags: Facebook, Google, Health Information, Search, Who Controls Information, Yahoo!
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Eli Pariser talks at TED about how we’re losing the internet to algorithmic gatekeepers at Google, Yahoo, Facebook and even our news sites, which tailor search results to what they think we want to see. Which is why I often start exploring my search results on page 10 instead of page 1. But what if some search results don’t even make it onto my queue?
The side by side comparison of two different users’ internet search on the term “Egypt” during the crisis there is a stunning example of how computerized gatekeepers choose for us what we see (and don’t see) when we log on.
You can’t have a functioning democracy if citizens don’t have a free flow of information.
I encourage you to watch the entire video, and hope the big mahoffs of the internet sitting in the TED audience heard Pariser when he told them this – Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
May 24th, 2011 by M. Brian Fennerty, M.D. in Health Tips
Tags: Adenoma, Colonoscopy, Endoscopy, Gastroenterology, Polyp, Quality Measures, Surrogate markers of quality
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I have noticed that we all think we are the best endoscopist around (in my case, that is indeed true!). However, we really never measured colonoscopy skill as a “patient-centered” metric and instead often use speed, efficiency, sedation needs, etc. when judging our colleagues. What is more important than these measures, however, is whether we find and remove adenomas, thereby preventing colon cancer downstream in our patients.
A number of surrogate markers for quality colonoscopy and polyp detection have been used in the past, including scope-withdrawal time from the cecum. But the one measure that has been the best predictor of quality is an endoscopist’s ADR (adenoma detection rate). In fact, this is the most reliable quality measure yet determined, and it may become the basis for being paid for these procedures in the not so distant future.
So I need to ask you:
1) Do you know your ADR?
2) Do you or does your group compare your ADR to other endoscopists within your endoscopy unit or practice?
3) Is there a program to increase ADR in low performers in your endoscopy unit?
4) Do you use your ADR as a marketing tool?
5) What is your take on the ADR as a quality measure?
I look forward to hearing from you on this topic!
*This blog post was originally published at Gut Check on Gastroenterology*
May 23rd, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Health Tips
Tags: Cat, Combat Application Tourniquet, Emergency Medicine, How To Stop Bleeding, New Techniques, New Tools, QuikClot, Stopping Bleeding, Technology, wilderness medicine
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The Combat Application Tourniquet Dr. Brad Bennett provided an excellent workshop at the 2010 Wilderness Medical Society annual meeting in Snowmass, Colorado on how to manage severe bleeding, based on his work with the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care. From time to time,
wilderness medicine practitioners encounter situations of severe bleeding, so this information is essential for anyone responsible for the health and safety of outdoor explorers and adventurers.
In a simple algorithm, we learned that the first attempt to control bleeding is almost always direct hand pressure. This is followed by application of a pressure bandage. If that is successful, the victim then is evacuated. If the pressure bandage does not adequately control bleeding on the torso of the victim, then a hemostatic (stops bleeding) substance is applied prior to evacuation. If bleeding from an arm or leg threatens the victim’s life, a tourniquet may be required. A hemostatic agent that is being used with increasing frequency is QuikClot Combat Gauze. Tourniquets include the Combat
Application Tourniquet (“C-A-T”). Using any of these modalities requires instruction and preparation. Read more »
This post, How To Stop Bleeding: The Combat Application Tourniquet And QuikClot, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
