A German physician wrote me about this, so while CNN may have an international reach, it’s not always with an adoring audience.
The physician was reacting to the weekend “Paging Dr. Gupta” program, which Dr. Gupta referred to once as “SG, MD.” The first thing that struck me was his introduction, in which he said:
“I’m your doctor. I’m also your coach.”
Later in the program he said:
“Think of this as your appointment. No waiting. No insurance necessary.”
I find this very troubling. He’s not my doctor. He’s not my coach. When I watch a “news” program, it’s NOT my medical appointment. It’s supposed to be news, not medical advice.
But that’s not what the German physician wrote to me about, so I kept watching (the segment in question appears about 5 minutes and 30 seconds deep, and after the 30-second commercial you have to watch to get there):
Gupta reacted to a viewer’s message on Twitter in which the tweep asked: “Does anyone know a ‘miracle’ treatment for ovarian cancer?” Read more »
Four-year-old Devan Tatlow’s struggle with leukemia has caused quite a stir on the Internet, prompting celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian to encourage people to donate their bone marrow. Dr. Jon LaPook talks with Devan’s family about their search for a match.
Imagine throwing a lifesaving treatment in the garbage. That’s exactly what happens in the United States over ten thousand times a day because we do not routinely offer to collect precious umbilical cord blood at the time of birth. Thousands of Americans — many of them children — needlessly die annually because they cannot find either a bone marrow or umbilical cord blood match to help treat conditions like lymphoma and leukemia. Yet umbilical blood is discarded as medical waste in the vast majority of the more than four million births occurring each year. Read more »
Felasfa Wodajo, an orthopedic oncologist in Virginia, recently took his iPad into the operating theater to see how it performs in such an environment.
Being one of the editors at iMedicalApps, Dr. Wodajo just published his initial findings and they bode a rather bright clincial future for the iPad, and tablets in general.
On June 11, 2009, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that the H1N1 flu that was then spreading around the world was an official pandemic. This triggered a series of built-in responses in many countries, including stockpiling anti-viral medications and preparing for a mass H1N1 vaccination program.
At the time the flu was still in its “first wave” and the fear was that subsequent waves, as the virus swept around the world, would become more virulent and/or contagious –- similar to what happened in the 1918 pandemic. This did not happen. At least our worst fears were not realized. The H1N1 pandemic, while serious, simmered through the winter of 2009-2010, producing a less than average flu season, although with some worrisome difference. Read more »
Apparently the New England Journal of Medicine was listening yesterday when I suggested to an audience in Chicago that the way to a doctor’s heart is through his smartphone. The NEJM This Week iPhone App went live this morning on iTunes and it’s worth a look.
The App offers four pages covering articles, images, audio and video. According to Toby Plewak, NEJM’s Manager of Product Development, the article page covers most everything available through the print/web version as well as all of the “online first” (early release) articles for the current week. The only articles excluded are those that can’t be delivered effectively on the iPhone.
I just listened to the NEJMThis Week audio summary and it’s beautiful (I know what I’ll be doing during my drives to the Texas Medical Center.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
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…
Felasfa Wodajo, an orthopedic oncologist in Virginia, recently took his iPad into the operating theater to see how it performs in such an environment.
