December 16th, 2009 by DrCharles in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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With all the controversy about the utility of mammography, optimal Pap smear intervals, and risks of prostate cancer screening, you have to ask yourself – what are the most beneficial and cost effective preventive services we should be focusing on?
Here are the top 10 preventive services. These items were chosen by the National Commission on Prevention Priorities, and highlight those preventive services including immunizations, screenings, preventive medications, and counseling that give “the most bang for the buck.” For an in depth discussion of methods and results, read Am J Prev Med 2006;31(1):52–61
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*This blog post was originally published at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles*
December 4th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Opinion
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As I sit here in a medical innovation conference – I find myself becoming more and more angered by one of the speakers. A man with an MBA and fancy title from PriceWaterhouseCoopers is lecturing us about how doctors are essentially money-grubbing, change-resistant, quality-care avoiding “pains in the you-know-what,” obstructing progress in healthcare reform and blocking technology adoption.
His lack of understanding of the complexity of medical care was breathtaking. And yet, he expresses a sentiment that I’ve witnessed all too many times. Here are a few choice quotations: Read more »
November 27th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
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Sometimes it’s hard to know what kind of doctor you’d like to become. The first two years of medical school are devoted to memorizing text books, and then suddenly in third year you are expected to function as part of a team of different specialists, rotating at 2-6 week intervals. At the end of the third year you’d better have a clear sense of what kind of medicine/surgery you’d like to practice for the rest of your life. No changing your mind! (At least, that’s how the process is supposed to go.)
I asked a physician friend of mine how he came to choose family medicine as a career. I expected him to say that he liked the autonomy of figuring out conundrums on his own – to take care of the entire family and be there for them throughout the life cycle, etc… But what he actually told me was a little unexpected. Read more »
November 23rd, 2009 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Opinion
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In medical schools, primary care continues to be among the least respected fields a student can choose.
No where is that more starkly illustrated than in Pauline Chen’s recent New York Times piece, where she tells a story of a bright medical student who had the audacity to choose primary care as a career:
Kerry wanted to become a primary care physician.
Some of my classmates were incredulous. In their minds, primary care was a backup, something to do if one failed to get into subspecialty training. “Kerry is too smart for primary care,” a friend said to me one evening. “She’ll spend her days seeing the same boring chronic problems, doing all that boring paperwork and just coordinating care with other doctors when she could be out there herself actually doing something.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
November 11th, 2009 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network, Book Reviews, Quackery Exposed
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That’s the title of a new book by Melvin H. Kirschner, M.D. When I first saw the title, I expected a polemic against conventional medicine. The first line of the Preface reassured me: “Everything we do has a risk-benefit ratio.” Dr. Kirschner took the title from his first pharmacology lecture in medical school. The professor said “I am here to teach you how to poison people.” After a pause, he added, “without killing them, of course.”
He meant that any medicine that has effects has side effects, that the poison is in the dose, and that we must weigh the benefits of any treatment against the risks. Dr. Kirschner has no beef with scientific medicine. He does have a lot of other beefs, mainly with the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and alternative medicine. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
