Ed Bennett is the Director of Web Strategy at the University of Maryland Medical System and the real expert of how hospitals use social media. He has just published his recent slideshow focusing on this issue.
Every one in a while, an inventor comes up with something remarkable, not only in its ingenuity, but in its simplicity and applicability. Whenever I see something like that, I usually mutter or marvel, “I wish I had thought of that.” Such is the case with the original ski pole Slishman Splint, invented by my friend Dr. Sam Slishman.
Wilderness medical types are familiar with the difficulties managing long bone fractures in the backcountry. A femur fracture can be a devastating, and even life-threatening, injury. It’s common knowledge that realigning the bony fragments and stabilizing the femur are important to control blood loss and pain, and to facilitate victim extrication and transport. There are numerous traction splints for this purpose on the market, but many of them are heavy, bulky and unwieldy in a remote setting. Sam intended to solve that problem. Read more »
It came in the mail to one of my partner’s patients, a direct mailing (4 pgs, pdf, 1.2M) promising cheap drugs at significant cost savings from Global Pharmacy Canada. A closer look at the flier, however, discloses the drugs are not from Canada, but rather pharmacies somewhere in India.
Call it global direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. All you have to do is sign a little waiver and send your money: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
From health privacy to the ethical obligation of doctors to be visible on Twitter, the panel-based dialog at Blog World Expo raised as many questions as answers.Medical professionals in the online space face remarkable challenges, especially with regard to transparency, personal boundaries, and the definition of patient privacy.It’s clear that our technology is ahead of our legal and ethical dialog. Read more »
“Hi. Thanks for a great post. My pediatrician expressed concern to me about potential adjuvants in the H1N1 vaccines, saying that there are six manufacturers and potentially a wide variety in the vaccines among them. I know adjuvants are used more widely in Europe, but it’s not clear if the ones that may be used in the H1N1 vaccines have been tested for side effects. I think given the groups being prioritized for this vaccine, for instance infants, we should not be taking any chances in administering anything untested via vaccine. It conjures up the smallpox vaccine fiasco in the 1970s where the government had to set aside a vaccine injury compensation program for injured parties, some of whom were permanently affected. What do you know about adjuvants being added and the safety claims being made by the CDC when testing time has obviously been nonexistent.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
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…