Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Claustrophobia And Doctors Trapped In An Elevator

A comment on my previous post by undead doctor, reminded me of another story about a lift in the old academic building in the old hospital.

Every morning all the registrars, medical officers and interns in the surgery department would meet in the boss’ office for a report on the previous night’s activities and to deal with whatever other administration had to be taken care of. After this meeting the day’s work would begin. The surgery department was on the seventh floor of the academic building. The lifts in that building were fairly small, so we did what any normal surgeon-type would have done in our situation…we tried to see exactly how many people we could cram into the lifts on the way back down after the meeting. As it turns out the lifts couldn’t take more than thirteen. I know this from the time we crammed fourteen into one lift and it got stuck between floor three and floor four. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

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…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

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…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

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…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

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…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

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…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles