Medical

The ED is a hectic place. Sore throats. Heart attacks. Dog bites. Broken bones. Strokes. Major trauma. If you work in an ED, you see it all. And then some. Is it any wonder then, with the potential for literally thousands of medical and surgical problems to stumble through the doors of an ED, that hospitals and the bodies that accredit them demand strict, regimented, standard, reproducible emergency assessments and the forms that document them? Of course not. This insures that all the basic questions are asked, that decision trees are followed, that diagnostic criteria are carefully applied, that correct diagnoses are made, and that treatment decisions are made based on evidenced based standards of care, both local and national. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

There’s an interesting post today on Shots about a family with an autistic son visiting the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. The museum is one of more than 30 centers for learning and preservation that are taking steps (.pdf) to increase health awareness, including responding to the special needs of visitors with conditions such as autism or Alzheimer’s. Jessica Naudziunas writes: … it’s not always easy to take a kid with autism out into the world, especially a museum. A recent tally found that 1 in 88 children in the U.S. is somewhere on the autism spectrum. For these youngsters, if a place doesn’t have appropriate accommodations, museum-going is a no-go for much of their childhood. That’s because so often, what seems like a fun diversion ends up causing feelings of anxiety and sometimes panic. That’s why some museums have made special accommodations. “During those hours the museum looks different,” said Leslie Walker, Please Touch Museum’s vice president for community learning. Flashing lights are dimmed, and booming music is turned down. Kids who want a sense of security about their visit are encouraged to create custom schedules and maps beforehand. And museum employees who will teach kids about the exhibits go through sensitivity training to learn what needs a child with autism might have to interact like their peers. Previously: Stanford study reveals why human voices are less rewarding for kids with autism, Director of Stanford Autism Center responds to your questions on research and treatment and A mother’s story on what she learned from her autistic son Photo by Jim, the Photographer

Why do we never consider unintended consequences? Whether we are thinking of legislation or physician led guideline panels, or governing bodies (like ACGME), the lack of consideration of unintended consequences remains mind numbing. Let me provide some examples. Please read this articles about how the war on drugs has fueled the hepatitis C epidemic. One could also argue that this war damages more young people than the drugs themselves. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

Drug discovery is time-consuming and expensive, and failure is a strong possibility. To accelerate the therapeutic development process, the National Institutes of Health recently launched a program pairing researchers with a selection of pharmaceutical industry compounds, which proved to be ineffective for the specific use they were developed for, to determine if the drugs are useful in treating other conditions. Today, the NIH awarded $12.7 million to nine academic research groups to reexamine pharmaceutical industry compounds to treat eight disease areas, including Alzheimer’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and schizophrenia. Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, wrote on his blog: With this approach, we are hopeful that we can give these compounds a second chance, while making important discoveries for several diseases. I am very excited about this pilot program for several reasons. As part of the design of the program, NIH developed template agreements to streamline the legal and administrative process for academic-industry collaboration—and already it’s clear that that strategy is saving months if not years of negotiations. In addition, this is our first experiment with “crowdsourcing” of therapeutic opportunities—giving the entire biomedical community access to highly active compounds and related data, and enabling anyone to make new connections to disease. I expect this model to yield some great science, and I’m optimistic it will also speed the development of new drugs to patients. Previously: Why drug development is time consuming and expensive (hint: it’s hard) Photo by Ano Lobb

Sexual health, though fundamentally important to every human being, is rarely discussed between patients and their healthcare providers. It’s an important conversation and one that requires doctors and patients to venture into less-than-comfortable territory. Who exactly should treat sexual health issues? Many assume that this should be the territory of a gynecologist for women or a urologist for men. But because we see our patients more frequently than any other doctors, general internists are on the front line to address sexual health issues. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

On Saturday, nearly 200 students walked away from the Stanford campus with a new title: Doctor! My colleague was on the scene at the medical school’s commencement, during which 95 members of the graduating class earned MDs, 91 earned PhDs or MD/PhDs, and 39 earned master’s degrees. More images from the day, which featured a keynote address from Nobel Prize winner Brian Kobilka, MD, can also be found on the medical school’s Flickr page. Previously: Stanford medical school alum fulfills lifelong dream to participate in commencement ceremony Photo by Norbert von der Groeben

Medical education today requires students to assimilate lots of facts and amass an incredible fund of knowledge quickly. As medical science advances, more material must be mastered. Medical students must be able to organize facts and apply them to patient care. Medical care today is becoming more of a team effort. Successful physicians must be adept at both leadership roles and in the role of a team member (worker bee). Much of these character traits are also important for success in the world of business and many MBA schools are working to identify students with these particular skills. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

It’s painful enough to lose a patient. But I found it even more painful to try to console a family whom I’d never met. Depending on your point of view, the limited patient contact afforded the anesthesiologist is a disappointment or a perk of the specialty. Anesthesiologists are steadily branching out into other areas of perioperative care where lengthier patient/family contact is necessitated but the preop encounter with the anesthesiologist is short and to the point. Nothing like an outpatient visit with a new internist. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

The European Medicines Agency has completed a review of diclofenac. A positive benefit-risk balance has been confirmed but new contraindications and revised warnings have been recommended. The review was started in October 2012 in response to a broader review of NSAIDs which identified a small increase in the risk of cardiovascular side effects with diclofenac [...]

Times keep a’changin’ in how the diabetes industry interacts with patients. Remember how it used to be, many years ago? When these companies making diabetes devices and medicines didn’t take our views into consideration in making decisions? Then came the…The post New Kids on the Diabetes Summit Block Embrace T2s appeared first on DiabetesMine: the all things diabetes blog.