December 5th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Opinion
2 Comments »
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*
November 15th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in News, Opinion
4 Comments »
OMG, Michelle Duggar is pregnant again. Is she competing with the wife of Feodor Vassilyev? Vassilyev was pregnant 27 times between 1725 and 1765 and gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. 67 children survived infancy making her the woman who had the most documented number of children in the world. Vassilyev had a history of multiple births. What’s Duggar’s excuse?
I’ve written about Duggar before out of genuine concern and received over 2,000 comments on the Basil and Spice website. Many were unkind. People like Duggar because of her affable personality but want to ignore the facts: with each subsequent pregnancy, her life becomes fraught with danger. Her last pregnancy was extremely high-risk, complicated by pre-eclampsia and the emergency premature delivery of her daughter who only weighed 1.3 pounds at birth. It was a very close call. According to Answers.com, the Duggar family gets paid an estimated $25,000 to $75,000 per episode on the reality television show on Channel TLC. So, is it perhaps the show’s ratings that have prompted this 45 year old mother of 19 children to have yet another child? Is it the Baby-Doll syndrome where women have multiple children because they like the baby doll effect of having a newborn? I’m still scratching my head. However, I would be remiss if I did not, as an obstetrician offer some advice (albeit unsolicited) regarding the dangers of extreme parity (aka a great number of pregnancies). It was the same advice I offered almost 2 years ago: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
April 5th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Humor, Opinion
No Comments »
No, not the shoes. The British TV series.
Martin is surgeon, whose glittering career comes crashing down around him when he develops a phobia which prevents him conducting operations. He makes a life changing decision to retrain as a GP, and applies for a vacant post in the sleepy Cornish hamlet of Portwenn, where he spent childhood holidays.
Doc Martin is as grumpy, short-tempered and brilliant as House, and while he has no cadre of residents to torture, he does have a town full of varied and wonderful characters to annoy him. And of course, there’s a love interest.
We’ve barely started watching, and already there have been these memorable lines –
Patient – Am I your first official patient?
Doc Martin – You are indeed. Collect a thousand loyalty points and you get a free coffin. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
