October 17th, 2011 by DrWes in Opinion
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There they were, little maroon flags outside three patient exam room doors. You could almost hear the game show host ask the question:
Will it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3?”
So I asked the medical assistant, “Who’s next?” and she pointed me to Door #2.
It was a new patient with a familiar problem, one I’ve seen probably a thousand times before. Another day, another case. Bada bing, bada boom. Nothing to it. You would think that all cases, and all people are the same in some ways. Certainly, those managing our health care system of the future would like us to believe it’s so simple: just another case of heart failure (what can go wrong?) or supraventricular tachycardia (love that one, there’s NOTHING hard about that!) or maybe a few PVC’s (Check). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
October 16th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Sometimes having no end of job prospects, more than one in four new doctors regret going into medicine by their graduation, according to a recruitment firm survey.
Recruiters Merritt, Hawkins asked new doctors if they would study medicine if they had it all to do over again, and 28% said they would select another field, up from 18% in a similar survey in 2008.
Still, the newly minted physicians have plenty to do while they mull other options. About 78% of newly minted physicians received at least 50 job solicitations during their training, and 47% received 100 or more contacts from recruiters.
Despite the heavy rotation of recruiters, residents Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
October 6th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion
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Monday’s New Yorker has a story, Personal Best, by Atul Gawande. It’s about coaching, and the seemingly novel idea that doctors might engage coaches – individuals with relevant expertise and experience — to help them improve their usual work, i.e. how they practice medicine.
Dr. Gawande is a surgeon, now of eight years according to his article. His specialty is endocrine surgery – when he operates it’s most often on problematic glands like the thyroid, parathyroid or appendix. Results, and complications, are tracked. For a while after he completed his training he got better and better, in comparison to nation stats, by his accounting. And then things leveled off.
The surgeon-writer considered how coaches can help individuals get better at whatever they do, like playing a sport or singing. He writes:
The coaching model is different from the traditional conception of pedagogy, where there’s a presumption that, after a certain point, the student no longer needs instruction. You graduate. You’re done. You can go the rest of the way yourself…
He wonders about how this might apply in medicine: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
October 3rd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Dermatologists spend their days telling patients to avoid the sun and their careers striving to practice in it. They’re leaving the Midwest and mountain states to practice in the southern and western U.S.
To evaluate the migration patterns of dermatologists from residency to clinical practice, researchers reviewed data from the American Academy of Dermatology’s membership database. They looked at 7,067 dermatology residents who completed training before 2005 and were actively practicing in 2009. Results appeared at the September issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
Most graduates from Middle Atlantic and Pacific census divisions relocated Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
September 22nd, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion
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Last week I wrote a simple post on eating yogurt with fresh fruit for lunch. It wasn’t until later that I realized why it’s a medical lesson.
It happens that yesterday morning I was up and out early. I saw a former colleague walking along the street. He’d gained weight, and walked slowly. I thought about how hard he works, and what a good doctor I know him to be. And yet any citizen or patient might size him up as heavy, maybe even unhealthy.
The problem is not that he’s uneducated or can’t afford nutritious foods. He knows fully about the health benefits of losing weight and exercise. The problem is the stress and long hours of a busy, conscientious physician’s lifestyle.
When I worked as a practicing doctor and researcher at the hospital, I rarely ate a nutritious breakfast or lunch. My morning meal, too often, consisted of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
