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More Specialty-Specific Apps Are Coming On The Market

The explosive growth of medical applications for smartphones, launched by the  debut of the innovative Apple iTunes App store in 2008, promises to fundamentally change the physician’s tool set. While many specialties have always been heavily dependent on technology, such as radiology and cardiology, the ubiquity of these small, interconnected computers means that every physician will soon have access to a broad array of software and hardware to help them perform their daily work.

At iMedicalApps.com, we have been reviewing the most interesting medical apps on the market today as well as watching for trends in mobile medical technology. The most popular categories thus far have been clinical reference and utility apps.  Some of the largest download numbers have been for apps that provide drug and disease reference information, such as the encyclopedic Medscape app, or medical calculators.

However, more targeted apps that are specialty specific are slowly coming on the market. Some early ones, not surprisingly, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Medical Students Deterred From Primary Care

Primary care physicians are getting paid more, two surveys agree, while hospital employment is rising.

Internists earned $205,379 in median compensation in 2010, an increase of 4.21% over the previous year, reported the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA’s) Physician Compensation and Production Survey: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data. Family practitioners (without obstetrics) reported median compensation of $189,402. Pediatric/adolescent medicine physicians earned $192,148 in median compensation, an increase of 0.39% since 2009.

Among specialists, anesthesiologists reported decreased compensation, as did gastroenterologists and radiologists. Psychiatrists, dermatologists, neurologists and general surgeons reported an increase in median compensation since 2009.

Regional data reveals primary and specialty physicians in the South reported the highest earnings at $216,170 and $404,000 respectively. Primary and specialty-care physicians in the Eastern section reported the lowest median compensation at $194,409 and $305,575. This year’s report provides data on nearly 60,000 providers.

Recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins reported that general internal medicine was one of its top two most requested searches for the sixth consecutive year. Family physicians were the firm’s most requested type of doctor, followed by internists, hospitalists, psychiatrists, and orthopedic surgeons.

Average compensation for internists Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*

Medical Students: Why Choose Psychiatry?

Here at Shrink Rap, we often talk about the stigma of having a psychiatric disorder. It’s funny, but society has it almost ranked, so that certain illnesses are very stigmatized–schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder, to name a few, and others are pretty much socially acceptable: Attention Deficit Disorder, for example, especially among the high school/college crowd where the patient often gets identified (or self-identifies) as the source for those late-night stimulants that so many kids cop.

It’s not just the patients. Psychiatrists are also stigmatized, and that doesn’t help much when our society talks about the shrink shortage.

Exalya writes:

I’m a first (almost second) year medical student with a strong passion for psychiatry. I love listening to your podcasts; you give me hope for my future when the drudgery of first year classes is getting me down, and I feel like I always learn something useful.

That aside, I am writing to you seeking some advice. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*

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 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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