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Why You Should Still See Your Doctor When You’re Not Sick

Patient Power logoExperts say over 100,000 lives a year could be saved in the United States if patients focused more on preventive medicine. What is preventive medicine? What can you do in your everyday life that may make a long-term difference?

On this Patient Power program, you will hear from two board certified internists from the UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics in Western Washington. They will discuss how having an ongoing relationship with a primary care physician who you check in with regularly –- even when you’re well –- gives you the best chance at staying healthy.

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Keeping Patients Quiet

Some things are just part of the problem in healthcare. The company Medical Justice is one such thing. I’ve written about them before. Medical Justice sees the medical malpractice crisis and devised a solution: Muzzle the patients. It’s as misguided as it is ridiculous.

Medical Justice says doctors need to stop their patients from saying bad things about them. They charge doctors hundreds — even thousands — of dollars a year to help do this.

Under one of their programs, they give doctors contracts to use with their patients. The doctor tells the patient that they must agree to the terms of the contract before the doctor agrees to see them.  Okay, so there are lots of forms that patients need to sign when they go to the doctor. What makes these so different? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

“Less Is More” In Medicine: Why Patients Aren’t Buying It

In a recent article, the editors of the Archives of Internal Medicine make the case that too much unneeded care is being delivered in physician’s offices these days. According to the authors, “patient expectations” are a leading cause of this costly problem.

Their solution? Get physicians to share with patients the “evidence” for why their requests are crazy, wrong, ill-informed or just plain stupid. But getting patients to buy into the “less is more” argument is a daunting task as most physicians already know. The problem is complicated by the fact that patients have a lot good reasons for not buying it. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

Unnecessary Tests And Treatments: Responsible Reporting Can Help

Just when I’ve lost hope that mainstream media will stop perpetuating the myth the more medicine equals better care, the Associated Press came up with this excellent piece. The article states, rightly, that “anywhere from one-fifth to nearly one-third of the tests and treatments we get are estimated to be unnecessary,” and that, “it may lead to dangerous side effects.”

Regular readers of this blog should be familiar with those concepts. I wrote recently that patients often reject evidence-based medicine. One reason is that there aren’t enough clinical guidelines available for patients to make an informed decision. Read more »

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

Little Kids Online: When Is It Safe?

Little Kid OnlineWhen should small kids get online? Is there a magic age? Is there a “best” way to start? What websites should small kids begin their online life with? And, most importantly, is it safe for small kids to be online?

Tune in as Dr. Gwenn talks about helping your youngest kids begin their online safely and smartly with you there as their earliest online guides. Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio here.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Gwenn Is In*

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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