November 14th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Opinion
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I always loved to type. It started in high school with typing class. We were told that typing was critical for college term papers. I liked it so much that I took advanced typing. It was myself and 12 girls with Farrah Fawcett hair. Heaven.
Fast forward to 2011. My interface with the medical record is my fingers. Most of my communication flows through my hands. I complete the core of my documentation in the exam room. Fast documentation of information at the outset of an encounter allows for meaningful, eye-to-eye dialog during the latter part of the visit.
Those who can’t type have a different experience with their EHR. Sure there’s voice recognition but when pressed they wish they could make a sentence instantly flow onto the screen. Two colleagues this week, one from Barbados and another from the UK, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
October 18th, 2011 by Michael Kirsch, M.D. in Opinion
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The blog, Shots, posted a question primer to prepare patients for medical office visits with their doctors. A reaction to this appeared on Glass Hospital, where John Schumann offered his own wry version of the question list. My less wry, and more dry response appears below.
While I agree with Shots that education is power, a closer look at the question list demonstrates that the intent to educate may obfuscate instead.
First, the post is entitled, Ten Questions to Ask Your Doctor, suggesting that patients arrive at their physician’s office Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*
October 17th, 2011 by DrWes in Opinion
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There they were, little maroon flags outside three patient exam room doors. You could almost hear the game show host ask the question:
Will it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3?”
So I asked the medical assistant, “Who’s next?” and she pointed me to Door #2.
It was a new patient with a familiar problem, one I’ve seen probably a thousand times before. Another day, another case. Bada bing, bada boom. Nothing to it. You would think that all cases, and all people are the same in some ways. Certainly, those managing our health care system of the future would like us to believe it’s so simple: just another case of heart failure (what can go wrong?) or supraventricular tachycardia (love that one, there’s NOTHING hard about that!) or maybe a few PVC’s (Check). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
October 5th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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As we discussed in the first of this two part series, mobile devices are already entering the world of the surgeon. Currently, it is mostly downloadable apps that promise to help surgeons with the informational portions of their tasks, such as tracking the cases they have done, e.g. Surgichart or helping in the consent process, e.g. Surgery Risk
While apps that are dedicated to the technical aspects of surgery, such as the excellent AO Surgery Reference, are becoming available, in the future we will see the iPad (or its brethren) actually in the operating room. Why ? Because the iPad has many characteristics that make it a great an advanced surgical instrument.
First is its small size. Every modern operating room has stacks of electronic equipment hanging from the ceiling or in large cabinets for patient monitoring and controlling in-field devices. Since the iPad already supports a bevy of standard wireless communication protocols, many of these large boxes’ functions could likely be off-loaded to an iPad with clever engineering. One immediate advantage would be that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 8th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Medical Art, Opinion
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Often the simplest solutions to problems are the best. So it would seem when it comes to the impact that increasing patient trust in physicians could have on many of the intractable challenges that face the health care industry everyday like non-adherence, lack of involvement, poor health status, dissatisfaction and so on.
I explore the link between patient trust and outcomes in the following infographic I curated and designed. What surprised me is how a patient’s level of trust in their doctor, like so much of what I talk about in this blog, boils downs to the patient’s perception of the physician’s ability to communicate: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
