January 27th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, True Stories
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One of my favorite patients died last week.
My reaction to this was not quite what you would think: I smiled. No, I didn’t smile because of his death; I smiled because of his life. I smiled because I got to be a part of that life. His death wasn’t his tragic end, it was the exclamation point to his life.
I am around a lot of death – it’s one of the things that makes being a doctor different from other jobs. My goal with all of my patients is to keep them healthy, to relieve their pain, and to do my best to keep them alive. Ultimately, though, it’s a losing battle; 100% of them will eventually die. That’s why I don’t like statistics about how many people who die due to inadequate doctoring. Our job is to resist an irresistible force. We are standing up to the hurricane, the avalanche, the flood. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
January 26th, 2010 by DrCharles in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Today NPR ran a story about fierce competition and cooperation among mouse sperm cells trying to fertilize an ovum. Apparently spermatozoa from the same male will often clump together, wiggling their flagella in a collective swim that accelerates the group faster towards an egg. In the race to be the first sperm to fertilize an egg this team approach (with sperm of a feather flocking together) may confer an evolutionary advantage. Solo-swimmers move more leisurely. The research and cool video presented on NPR were of sperm from the promiscuous deer mouse. Such murine sperm “behavior” may not be as evolutionarily needed in (usually) less promiscuous humans. Yet the idea of sperm cooperation, fitness, and competition in a microscopic steeplechase is fascinating. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles*
January 21st, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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It’s no secret that without a stronger primary care foundation, the current reform efforts are unlikely to be successful. If anything, it will only delay the inevitable.
I wrote last month that one discussed solution, adding more residency slots, won’t help: it would simply perpetuate the disproportionate specialist:primary care ratio.
A recent op-ed in The New York Times expands on that theme. The authors suggest that not only does primary care need to be promoted, specialist slots should be limited. Simply building more medical schools, or adding more residency slots, without such restrictions will only add to the number of specialists.
Already, many primary care residency slots go unfilled – what’s the point of adding more?
You have to solve the root cause that shifts more students away from primary care: disproportionately low pay, disrespect that starts early in medical training, and poor working conditions where bureaucracy interferes with the doctor-patient relationship.
Until each of those issues are addressed, simply more spending money to produce more doctors simply isn’t going to work.
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
January 13th, 2010 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, True Stories
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I’ve always wanted to be a doctor.
Never a writer.
With a new year and a new decade, I am determined to become a better writer not because of some childhood dream or expectation from others, but because of a near mishap that occurred at the beginning of 2000. A simple phone call changed the destiny of my brother from having a good outcome to having a great outcome. A simple phone call may have been the difference between “you are cancer free” to “I’m sorry to tell you it’s come back.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
December 16th, 2009 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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The current generation of medical students are not choosing primary care and instead are flocking to specialty care medicine in droves. Unlike decades ago when the best and brightest often went into internal medicine, the vast majority of students opt for dermatology, radiology, anesthesiology, and ophthalmology. Reasons for doing so include better predictable schedules, work-life balance, and compensation.
While I understand that proponents for more primary care doctors use other reasons to increase the primary care workforce, namely decrease the healthcare cost curve and improve health outcomes, medical students today need more compelling and practical reasons to do primary care.
I’ll give three. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
One of my favorite patients died last week.
