April 27th, 2011 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Health Policy, True Stories
Tags: Admissions Policies, Emergency Medicine, Hospital Administrators, Inpatients, Overcrowding, Poor conditions, Public Health
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Our emergency department was very busy recently. The hospital was full and we were holding patients. Three had been in the ER many hours; one waiting for a bed for six hours, another eight hours, and still one more for eleven hours. Of course, ambulance traffic hadn’t stopped and the waiting room was full, with patients waiting too long to be seen. (And we all know that the media loves to highlight bad outcomes from the ER waiting room!)
Administration set up a ‘command post’ to try to arrange beds, discharges and moves. At one point I asked one of our administrators to move those waiting the longest to hallway beds up on the patient floors. He told me that he couldn’t because each of the two floors in question already had one patient in the hall. And besides, it would violate the patients’ privacy and make it too difficult for the nurses to do their admissions assessments.
I pointed out, ‘our nurses do assessments in the hall, our patients don’t have privacy and sometimes we have to work with seven or eight patients in the hallway!’
He replied, ‘yes Dr. Leap, I know, but I won’t move anyone else to the hall upstairs. I just won’t.’ I asked why. With a slight sense of obvious discomfort he replied, ‘because there is a different standard. When patients leave the ER, they expect to go to a better place.’ Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
April 26th, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Quackery Exposed, True Stories
Tags: Acupuncture, Alternative Medicine, Denial, Dismissiveness, Dr. Oz, Dr. Oz Show, Homeopathy, Mehmet Oz, Mysticism, Pet Beliefs, Pseudoscience, Quackery, Science And The Media, Science Based Medicine, Steve Novella
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I must say I was a bit shocked two weeks ago when I was contacted by a producer for The Dr. Oz Show inviting me on to discuss alternative medicine. We have been quite critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz over his promotion of dubious medical treatments and practitioners, and I wondered if they were aware of the extent of our criticism (they were, it turns out).
Despite the many cautions I received from friends and colleagues (along with support as well) – I am always willing to engage those with whom I disagree. I knew it was a risk going into a forum completely controlled by someone who does not appear to look kindly upon my point of view, but a risk worth taking. I could only hope I was given the opportunity to make my case (and that it would survive the editing process).
The Process
Of course, everyone was extremely friendly throughout the entire process, including Dr. Oz himself (of that I never had any doubt). The taping itself went reasonably well. I was given what seemed a good opportunity to make my points. However, Dr. Oz did reserve for himself the privilege of getting in the last word—including a rather long finale, to which I had no opportunity to respond. Fine—it’s his show, and I knew what I was getting into. It would have been classy for him to give an adversarial guest the last word, or at least an opportunity to respond, but I can’t say I expected it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
April 26th, 2011 by Bongi in Humor, True Stories
Tags: Dripping Nose, Embarrassing Situations, Farting, Gas, General Surgery, Illness, Scrubbed In, South Africa, Sterile, Superhero, Surgery
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Yes, I have an alter ego. Yes, I dress in funny clothes with a cap covering my head and a mask covering my face. And yes, dressed as such I try to fight the powers of evil (mainly sepsis and bleeding and cancer and the like). I am … a superhero. But there is often little understanding for what goes on under the paper thin masks and baggy gowns we wear. certain …um…occurrences, well, occur with us just as much as with other people.
A common cold behind a theatre mask is no small thing. Remember you can’t blow your nose. Sniffing loudly only works for a while and attracts all sorts of strange stares. Just leaving it is really the only option. The positive side of this is you suffer less from the mild dehydration that accompanies massive loss of …mucus. There is, after all, fluid replacement (it is a very short trip from your nostrils to your mouth over your upper lip). ‘Nuf sed. Somehow this never appealed to me though. So, for all you budding surgeons out there, when you have a cold, plug your nostrils with tissue before scrubbing up. once you’re scrubbed, it is too late. The side effects are only a slight change in voice which is a small price to pay to avoid the constant lip licking and salty taste throughout the operation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
April 26th, 2011 by GruntDoc in Humor, True Stories
Tags: Advice, Assault, Emergency Medicine, Felony, Police, What Not To Do, Wisdom
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If you’re alleging assault, don’t get loud with the Officer there to take a report. Especially if you have Felony warrants.
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
April 23rd, 2011 by KerriSparling in Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Babies, Diabetic Mommy, First Year Of Life, Gastroenterology, Gluten-Free Diet, Pediatrics, Reducing Risk Of Developing Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes
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(Alternate tittle: “Bring out yer bread!”)
Now that the little bird is the big O-N-E, we have completed one year as parents. And one year doing the gluten-free diet with our baby. This was important to me because I felt strongly about the ties between the early introduction of gluten and type 1 diabetes diagnoses. And after doing some research and discussing this as a family, Chris and I decided to keep our BSparl gluten-free for her first year.
It was pretty easy, to be honest, keeping a little baby off gluten. (Especially since she doesn’t have celiac, so our decision was elective instead of required.) The ease came mostly from the fact that BSparl breastfed for almost six months, and didn’t start on solid foods until just after she turned six months old. All breastmilk and/or formula made for a pretty streamlined food schedule for that first half year. When we introduced solid foods into her diet, we went with organic rice cereal and formula first, then mushed up fruits and assorted other mushed up items (like avocado and shredded chicken breast) mixed with food pouches like these from Ella’s Kitchen. Her diet was pretty mushy for a good long time, since it took about 8 months for her first tooth to bust through. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
