This “Fletchers Castoria” ad from 1941 is priceless. And as someone who spends his days working with bound-up grumps like Mary, I was reassured to know that horrific constipation is not a me-generation problem born of chicken fingers and Goldfish. ”Laxative tantrums,” however, are new to me. I seem to have pretty good luck with Miralax and Kristalose in my office. Your mileage (or tantrums) may vary.
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
Recently I ran into the office manager for one of Houston’s largest pediatric practices. New patient visits are way down and their doctors are looking for ways to keep business rolling. The same day I picked up this piece in the Wall Street Journal which shows declining admissions and doctor visits as a national trend. This is bad news and shows how our faltering economy is finally working its way more visibly into healthcare.
And apparently we’re making fewer babies –- admissions to neonatal intensive care units are down. This is a problem. For large tertiary medical centers and hospitals specializing in maternal-child health, babies are the critical customers of a healthy operation.
A few thoughts on what to look for (or dare I say, what to “expect”) with fewer babies:
Pipelines. Look for tighter referral relationships between large tertiary centers and the smaller community hospitals that deliver babies in need of specialized care. Centers already aligned with ready-made networks should be well-positioned for the downturn. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
I’ve been practicing for sixteen years now, doing both internal medicine and pediatrics. One of the joys of that is watching kids under my care grow up and not having to give up their care just because they get older. The spectrum is wide, with some kids growing up in “normal” families with “normal lives,” others in “abnormal” families, and yet others with inherently “abnormal” lives due to illness or disability.
But the kids aren’t the only thing that has changed over the past sixteen years. Their doctor has changed as well. My comfort zones have widened, not getting rattled by “abnormal” as I once did. I used to feel uncomfortable with the mentally and emotionally disabled, now I am not. I used to feel sorry for parents with “abnormal” children. I used to feel bad for kids who were “abnormal.” I still do now, but not nearly as much. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
Study painting, drama or the “soft” social sciences and you’ll probably be a pretty good doctor anyway. Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has been doing it for years and compared students in a special liberal arts admissions program to its traditional pre-med students.
For years, Mt. Sinai has admitted students from Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan, and Williams colleges based on a written application with personal essays, verbal and math SAT scores, high school and college transcripts, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews. No MCAT is required.
Students need to take one year of biology and one year of chemistry and maintain (swallow hard) a “B” average. They later get an abbreviated course in organic chemistry and medical physics. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
Identifying autistic kids as early as possible is very important so that appropriate clinical interventions and upbringing can have the most beneficial effect.
Now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that analyzing the unique signature of children’s pre-speech vocalizations can be a pretty good way to identify potential cases of autism. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
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…
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…
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…
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…
