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Latest Posts

Should Physicians Accept Gifts From Patients?

Are gifts for doctors appropriate in the physician-patient relationship? Or should doctors refuse all offerings of gratitude that come their way?

Patients often give gifts to doctors as an appreciative sign of great thanks for  for the care they provide.  Some years I may go unappreciated for my efforts.   Some years I get thanked for a job well done for spending time with the patient and their family.   Some years I have patients that hate me.  Some years I even I have  patients that hate me and love me.   Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist Blog*

Do Physicians Have A Moral Obligation To Engage In Social Media?

Some physicians may be hesitant to participate in social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter.

Well, get over it.

Great post by pediatrician Bryan Vartabedian who addresses this topic. Indeed, physicians have lost control of the online message, especially with, according to recent data, 60+ percent of patients visiting the web first when looking for health information.

Instead, anti-vaccine proponents and homeopaths have embraced the Internet, and now exert tremendous influence on patients. We doctors have no one to blame but ourselves for being so slow to get online. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Andrew Weil Sent Warning Letter By FDA For Selling Snake Oil Flu Remedies

Dr. Weil is often seen as the smiling “mainstream” of alternative medicine. He’s a real doctor (unlike, say, Gary Null), and much of what he advocates is standard and uncontroversial nutritional advice. But Weil illustrates the two biggest problems with so-called alternative medicne: once you’ve decided science is dispensible, the door is open to anything, no matter how insane; and no matter how altruistic you may start, sooner or later you start selling snake oil. Most doctors out there are working hard to help their patients prevent and overcome disease use the available evidence.  Others decide that science is too constraining and start practicing at the periphery of knowledge, throwing plausibility and ethics to the wind.

The fact that Weil claims to donate to charity all of his ill-gotten gains does not mitigate the harm he causes. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

Population Control, Contraception, And Climate Change

This year the topic of Blog Action Day is climate change, so I have decided to briefly mention the link between population control/contraception and climate.  This connection is finally getting attention again.  It was discussed when I was in college in the 70’s but became a political hot potato when China limited the number of children their citizens could legally have.

My roommate in college, KB, was an environmental science major.  She and I had many discussions (arguments) over how many children a family should have.  My mother had 8 children.  I also had two half-siblings from my father’s first marriage and 5 step-siblings.  She came from a family of 2 children. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*

When Your Significant Other Overrides Your Living Will

He knew she was angry with him.

“Whenever I come to see her, I reach out and take her hand, but she looks away.”

Husband and wife for well over 50 years, they had been through a lot.  They met in another country in another time, and to hear him tell it, it almost seemed fated that they’d end up together.  Since then, they’d moved many times, raised a family, supported each other through myriad illnesses.  They were growing old together.

Unfortunately, “growing old together” doesn’t always work out like we hope it will.  Diseases and illnesses ravage our bodies; dementia ravages our brains.  She’d long ago given up on their little garden in the backyard.  It was her favorite hobby, but she couldn’t manage it anymore. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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