October 27th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Better Health Network
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I have not worn a white coat since I opened my own practice more than twenty years ago.
Not that I had anything against white coats in principle. I wore my short white one in med school with pride, and the longer one in residency too; their pockets filled to bursting with the 4 x 6 inch six-ring binder emblazoned with my name in gold, courtesy of Burroughs-Wellcome, the long-defunct pharma giant, which had presented one to each medical student in the US for many years, as well as assorted pens, note cards, alcohol wipes, hemoccult cards, and so forth. I even had a tiny teddy bear pinned to my lapel, my own way of personalizing the impersonal.
When I went out on my own, though, I made the conscious decision not to wear one. I confess that all these years later, I don’t completely recall my thought processes on the subject. It seemed Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
October 26th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Opinion
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The new book is out about Steve Jobs. You may have already heard that he regretted delaying surgery for months for a type of pancreatic cancer and explored alternatives, including dietary changes. He told his biographer he later came to the conclusion that it was the wrong personal health decision.
If you check out social media conversations about health, the value of dietary changes is always a hot topic. Can becoming a vegetarian, for example, arrest the development of cancer or prevent its recurrence?
This week I will participate in a webinar on social media and breast cancer. One other panelists helps run a patient advocacy group. The other is a respected nurse who helps run the breast center at Johns Hopkins. In a preliminary discussion they each noted that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
October 26th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Research
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If you want to create an outcry of indignation, just inform people that certain screening tests are of no value and do not increase time on this earth. People love the idea that if they do all the right things and get all the medical tests at the right time, they can prevent disease ( ….uh…no, tests don’t prevent anything) or catch cancer early and cure it.
The furor over the lack of benefit for men of the screening Prostate Specific Antigen test (PSA) is still being heard. It seems everyone knows someone who was “saved” by getting a PSA and don’t try to tell me there is evidence to suggest otherwise, dammit!
There is a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
October 26th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Policy, Opinion
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I have now completed three weeks at my new job with the Disability Determination Services office. I sort of knew there were two types of disability payments under SSI: Title II and Title XVI. Now I understand the differences much clearer.
I would urge everyone who can afford it to purchase disability insurance. As the person training me put it, “If you are disabled, you are still ‘costing’ your family in addition to not contributing to the family income.”
The big difference between the two (II and XVI) is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
October 26th, 2011 by MelissaSchaeferMD in Announcements, Health Tips
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As clinicians, we know that the nearly one million patients who receive outpatient cancer treatment each year are at risk for serious infections that may lead to hospitalization, disruptions in chemotherapy schedules, and in some cases, death. Even so, it appears that outpatient oncology facilities may vary greatly in their attention to infection prevention. As one example – at an oncology clinic in Nebraska, it was discovered that syringes were reused to access bags of saline that were shared among multiple patients. This unsafe practice led to the transmission of hepatitis C virus to at least 99 cancer patients, resulting in one of the largest healthcare-associated outbreaks of its kind.
To help address this problem, CDC is launching a new program called Preventing Infections in Cancer Patients, featuring tools to help both clinicians and patients prevent infections.
As a cornerstone of this new initiative, CDC worked with Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Safe Healthcare*
