Many people like to make a comparison between the airline industry and the medical industry when it comes to protocols.
Is there a maximum age restriction for commercial pilots in the United States? Yes, there is. In 2007, Congress raised the age of forced retirement for commercial pilots from 60 to 65 years old.
In light of that, should physicians be forced to retire after a certain age as well? Should we trust our health to the abilities of a physician who is 70, 75, 80 years or older? Read more »
There are many expensive and complicated treatments for migraine headaches, but a new literature review shows that a single, 1,000mg-dose of aspirin is effective for more than half of all migraine sufferers.
Compared with placebo, aspirin reduced the symptoms of nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light (photophobia) and and sound (phonophobia), and eliminated severe or moderate pain within two hours in 24 percent of people. Read more »
“I’m tired,” I recently told a friend. He looked at me with a hint of a smile and gave the obvious answer: “Then you need to rest.”
This simple yet elusive answer hit me squarely. I spend a large portion of my life being tired, yet I don’t know how to rest. Sure, I waste a lot of time doing things that are unproductive, but they’re more of a distraction or an escape — they aren’t about rest. Read more »
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
