September 18th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
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I love my new blog web designer. She is incredibly talented, and has the uncanny ability to capture concepts with images. In fact, if you’d like to comment on this post to offer her a “high five” for this website design, I’m sure she’d appreciate it. Her name is Beata.
When Beata and I sat down to try to figure out how to express my “style” she asked me what kind of visuals I was drawn to. I showed her the Medi-mation website since I have a soft spot for 3-D science animation. She said she’d like to start with some microscopic images and stylize them for me so that they were suggestive of medical images, but not too literal.
Beata offered me a series of background patterns to choose from for my landing page. I did an abrupt halt over this one though: Read more »
August 17th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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I’m a big fan of GruntDoc (Texas ER physician Allen Roberts), one of the first medical bloggers on the Internet. To show my appreciation, I’ve decided to plagiarize repost this classic “rant” of his (in case you missed it in 2004):
I work in an Emergency Department, and have noticed that there is one common denominator in the majority of the assaulted patients I treat: they were all assaulted by “Some Dude“. (Also, they were all assaulted for “…no reason…”, but that’s the topic of another rant). This is true no matter where I work, the time of day or day of the week.
“Some Dude” has in the last two weeks shot my patients, sucker-punched, struck with bottles, beaten them with fists and a golf club (or perhaps the entire set), and pushed my patients down stairs.
Additionally, “Some Dude” has ’slipped drugs’ into the drinks of, transmitted sexual diseases to, and stolen the medications of my patients.
I have no idea how “Some Dude” is everywhere at once. I suspect he’s an evil superhero, though in the current times I cannot completely exclude an AlQuaeda conspiracy.
I advocate a vigorous police and public-health effort to locate and confine “Some Dude” due to the clear and present danger he represents to the health and welfare of our republic.
If you encounter “Some Dude,” please turn him in to the appropriate authorities. 
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
August 9th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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What have doctors been witness to this week? Here are my top 10 choice tidbits:
Welcome to the wild world of medicine.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
June 29th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Opinion
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I realize how incredibly tempting it is to reduce medicine to a series of algorithms. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t need to see a doctor to diagnose our ills? Wouldn’t it be great if our computer could tell us what’s wrong, and prescribe next steps for us? Wouldn’t it save money if we could triage peoples’ medical needs without human intervention?
Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. A friend of mine posted a link (on Twitter) to an online triage tool called “FreeMD.” The tool describes itself this way:
FreeMD® is an electronic doctor that conducts an interview, analyzes symptoms, and provides expert advice — for free.
So I decided to try it out. I imagined that I was a hypothetical patient – a woman in her mid thirties who had had abdominal surgery in the past and was now experiencing mild to moderate abdominal pain. My imaginary patient has abdominal adhesions from the surgery, which is causing her to have bowel pain – which could become an obstruction and surgical emergency.
I answered all the questions posed by the free MD and he responded that he had determined the most likely cause of my pain: tubal pregnancy or threatened abortion.
This response was offered even after I indicated that I was not pregnant. What would the average consumer think of seeing “threatened abortion” as a potential diagnosis for their abdominal pain? Would they know that this was the medical term for miscarriage or would their mind race to abortion clinics and ominous threats?
The problem with this tool is that it cannot take into account all the subtle co-morbidities and nuanced historical information necessary to return an accurate result. In fact, no online tool can replace a healthcare provider’s evaluation of a patient. Attempting to do so is like playing Russian Roulette with your health. Maybe you’ll get lucky and happen upon the correct diagnosis and treatment, but maybe you’ll be horribly misled and suffer irreperable harm.
Of course, companies like freeMD contain disclaimers about the service not being a substitute for a physician’s oversight. But the reality is that people are using the service to make decisions about when and if to see a professional for further evaluation. As a concerned physician, I worry about patients being misled about their health. I want patients to be empowered and to learn all they can about their disease or condition – but self-diagnosis, even with the aid of an algorithm, is fraught with danger.
My bottom line: computers will replace physicians when robots replace spouses. Similar satisfaction rates will come from either replacement option. People know instinctively that a good doctor is critical in managing their health – why else would there be so many physician rating tools, including the one here at Revolution Health? Why would Castle Connolly bother to publish their yearly “America’s Top Doctors” reports? This is not about paternalism – it’s an acknowledgement of the incredible complexity of human beings. And in this case my friends, it takes one (doctor) to know one (patient).This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
June 24th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in News
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I was reading about disease statistics today and came across some interesting information. See if you can guess the condition based on these factoids:
Time of injury:
Summer season (highest incidence in July)
Most common on the weekends (usually Saturday)
Most common at night
Average age at injury: 31.7 years old
Gender: 82% male
Number of new cases per year in the US: 10,000
So, have you guessed the condition?
Fireworks injuries perhaps? Binge drinking? Syphillis? Sasquatch attacks? Nope, guess again…
The answer is…
Spinal cord injury.
Spinal cord injuries are most often caused by motor vehicle accidents (44%), followed by violence (24%), falls (22%), sports (most are diving) 8%, and other issues 2%. The most common level of injury is in the neck, resulting in paralysis of all four limbs.
Why should we be worried about Saturday nights in July? Because that’s when people are at the highest risk for spinal cord injuries. School’s out, drinking and partying commence, and young men (more commonly than women) may drive while intoxicated and crash their cars. Please be careful this summer everyone, no one thinks they’ll be in an accident, until it’s too late.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
