A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, ACP’s flagship journal, finds that medical schools vary greatly in producing more primary care physicians and getting them into underserved communities.
– “Public schools graduate higher proportions of primary care physicians” than private schools.
– “The 3 historically black colleges and universities with medical schools (Morehouse College, Meharry Medical College, and Howard University) score at the top” in training primary care physicians who then go on to practice in underserved communities. (Click here for an interview with two recent graduates of historically black colleges and with Wayne Riley, MD, FACP, who is the president and CEO of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee and a regent of the American College of Physicians.)
– “The level of NIH support that medical schools received was inversely associated with their output of primary care physicians and physicians practicing in underserved areas.” Read more »
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world’s biggest sponsor of research in the life sciences. Today’s biologists, clinical researchers, and many others rely on the NIH for their funding.
To help people better understand how the peer review process happens within the NIH, the agency’s Center for Scientific Review created the following video that includes samples of research being openly discussed by a number of scientists:
Click here to view another video of tips for NIH grant applicants.
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
A patient came into the office the other day carrying a small clipping from a reputable women’s health newsletter touting new research on an herbal remedy for urinary tract infection. Having recurrent bladder infections, my patient naturally was wondering if this was something she should try.
The article was entitled “Herbal Remedy Effective for Urinary Tract Infections” and began with this startling revelation:
The common herbal extract forskolin can greatly reduce urinary tract infections and could potentially help antibiotics kill the bacteria that cause most bladder infections.
But the article advised that the “popular” remedy was not FDA approved for this indication, so you should “ask your doctor.” Read more »
The New York Times reported recently on efforts by providers and payers to increase patient medication adherence through the use financial incentives paid to patients. The article cited the use of small financial payments (<$100), awarded via lotteries, to patients that take Warfarin –- an anti-blood clotting medication.
There is certainly nothing wrong with financial incentives. Incentives have been proven successful in changing selected provider (quality and safety improvement) and patient behavior (stop smoking, weight loss and taking health risk surveys). But paying patients to take their medication is different. Actually, the evidence suggests that it is a just plain stupid idea for a whole lot of reasons. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
Headlines every day in the New York Daily News are luring men in as part of a mass prostate cancer screening campaign that the American Cancer Society not only does not endorse, but its chief medical officer recommends against. Yet the paper brags that it’s beginning its second decade of this non-evidence-based campaign. Sample headlines:
• Doctors urge New York men to take advantage of free, city-wide PSA testing
• What you don’t know can kill you. Get a FREE prostate cancer test. It can save your life
• Bring dad in for FREE prostate cancer test across the city on Father’s Day
and
• Don’t skip the PSA test! My prostate cancer is treatable because simple test caught it early (written by a Daily News staffer). Read more »
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