Heard Around The Blogosphere
A non English-speaking husband and wife went to a rural ER because the wife had chest pain. The ER staff was unable to understand their language and did not have an interpreter. Since the husband was trying to explain his wife’s chest pain to the doctors, they thought he also had chest pain. Both patients were admitted to rule out MI (a heart attack). They stayed overnight and both had a full, negative cardiac workup. The husband complied with the workup, figuring he was getting free care and a place to stay next to his wife. His wife’s symptoms resolved on their own. (via Rural Doctoring)
Did you know that there are medical diagnosis codes for almost everything under the sun? Yes, even an “accident involving a spacecraft injuring the occupant of the spacecraft.” (via KevinMD)
A hospital pharmacy cancelled a surgeon’s order of antibiotics after a young patient survived a ruptured appendix (with pus in the abdomen). They were adhering to a new protocol that required all antibiotics to be discontinued 24 hours after any surgery. If the surgeon hadn’t noticed the inappropriate application of this new rule, his patient could have become septic and died. This is just another example of the oversimplification of medicine that is becoming more and more common these days. (via Buckeye Surgeon)
The ACP Internist blog posts a weekly “Medical News of the Obvious.” Here are two goodies:
Parents of twins report more anxiety and sleeping difficulties in the year after birth than parents of single children, according to a study presented at the 24th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (via Science Daily). I wonder why?
This study, courtesy of the Washington Post, finds that auto deaths decline as gas prices rise because– ta da!– there are fewer people on the road to kill or be killed. And that is especially the case for those subgroups (like teenagers) who don’t have as much money to burn on gassin’ up.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
This is sad news that due to communication problem patient suffered from serious illness. There should be an interpreter there to help them out….
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I have also suffered from this problem many times……….
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Thanks for the comment… I’ll check out your blog.
The automatic cancelation of the surgeon’s antibiotics is an interesting example. That rule was created to comply with the Dept. of Health and Human Services quality measure of stopping PROPHYLACTIC antibiotics 24 hours after surgery (see http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov).
Attempted compliance with this quality measure is another example of how a broad policy inevitably has unintended consequences. This is why doctors push back against “cook book medicine.” Often it does more harm than good.
As a shameless plug, I have recently started my own blog as well (http://www.compassphs.com/blog). I hope it adds something useful to the blogosphere.