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Latest Posts

Should Doctors Bother To Blog Anonymously?

I see it from time to time. The doctor with a voice who’s uncomfortable with transparency. They post and comment under the cozy blanket of putative anonymity. But it’s bad policy. Here’s why doctors need to be outed in social media:

Anonymity is a fantasy. It’s remarkably difficult to achieve. With small thoughts you can hide – in fact, no one cares who you are. If you offer anything worth hearing people will ultimately find out who you are. And the plaintiff attorneys will always sniff you out.

You need a reality check. Anonymity gives us phony security and opens the door for us to say the things we wouldn’t normally say. There’s no editorial influence more powerful than knowing that my patients and my boss are listening. While an incendiary rant may serve to vent frustrations and drive traffic, it just fuels the perception of doctors as cynical, frustrated folks. And we don’t need help with that. Read more »

Cartoon Caption Contest Winners!

Thanks for the many entries in Better Health’s first cartoon caption contest. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted some of them several days after they’d been submitted (I was too aggressive with my anti-spam efforts). But they were all included in the contest. Our judges really struggled with choosing a winner… so they narrowed it to 2 and made them both winners!

Would you agree that it’s a toss up? Both authors will receive a Better Health t-shirt. I hope it makes them as happy as this guy. Thanks for participating!

Winner #1: Kerri Morrone Sparling “Please sign here and here and then I can write about you on my blog.”

Winner #2: Rob Falconer “Yes, we do normally weigh patients naked, Miss Saggar, but I think we’ll make an exception in your case.”

And just for a bit of trivia – the artist’s (Dr. Val’s) original caption read: “Mrs. Chen’s medical questionnaire was unremarkable except for her fine print at the end of page 3: ‘allergic to geodon.'”

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 Cartoon

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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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