December 10th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Medblogger Shout Outs, Research
3 Comments »
An interesting blog article from the folks at Compete came to my attention recently. Compete for those who don’t know is a fantastic analytics site to see how ANY website is doing in terms of popularity (number of visitors in a given time period). The basic data is free. For more in depth information, there’s a charge.
For example, for our practice’s website, here is the Compete data I pulled which is pretty accurate based on my own analytics information:
My nearest local competitor in terms of website popularity is the hospital, Fauquier Health System: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 5th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Opinion
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Would YOU as the patient see a doctor who is a well-known jerk, abuses drugs, gives the wrong diagnosis more often than not, and is known to like ordering very invasive tests??? Be honest…
The other week, a patient with a chronic cough exclaimed to me that she wished the fictional character Dr. House of TV fame actually existed in real life, because he was somebody who can diagnose anything.
I looked her straight in the eye and told her that somebody like Dr. House in the real world would be a physician nobody would want to see for many reasons:
- In the real world, patients expect doctors to have the correct diagnosis from the beginning (might forgive one wrong diagnosis). Dr. House seems to always get things wrong multiple times before he gets it right. I seriously doubt most patients would have stuck around as long as they do on the TV shows before going elsewhere. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
April 5th, 2011 by admin in Opinion, Quackery Exposed
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Everybody’s Doing It
One argument that often comes up when skeptics and proponents of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) debate is the question of the popularity of various CAM practices. Advocates of CAM often claim these practices are widely used and growing rapidly in popularity. Obviously, CAM proponents have an interest in characterizing their practices as widely accepted and utilized. Even though the popularity of an idea is not a reliable indication of whether or not it is true, most people are inclined to accept that if a lot of people believe in something there must be at least some truth to it. The evidence against this idea is overwhelming, but it is a deeply intuitive, intransigent notion that can only rarely be dislodged.
It might therefore be useful to get some idea of whether or not the claims of great popularity for CAM treatments are true. If they are not, fruitless debates about the probative value of such popularity could potentially be avoided, and it might be possible to diminish the allure associated with the belief that “everybody’s doing it.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
January 13th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
1 Comment »
This is my column in EM News for the month of January. Sometimes, being a physician means saying no and being disliked. It’s not a popularity contest! It’s about doing the right thing.
Most of us went into medicine because, in addition to being good students, we wanted to help people. How many oceans of ink and forests of paper have been used explaining that point to admissions committees we’ll never know. Suffice it to say, it felt very good when our professors wrote us glowing letters of recommendation. Of course, we were also saying, “I want to feel good about helping people. I want the recognition associated with the act of helping!” Premedical students, medical students, and physicians tend to be those people who desire accolades and who are naturally well-suited to attaining them. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
