Medical

Much has already been written about the Oregon Medicaid study that came out in the New England Journal of Medicine. Unfortunately, the vast majority is reflex, rather than reflection.  The study seems to serve as a Rorschach test of sorts, confirming people’s biases about whether Medicaid is “good” or “bad”.  The proponents of Medicaid point to all the ways in which Medicaid seems to help those who were enrolled – and the critics point to all the ways in which it didn’t.  But, if we take a step back to read the study carefully and think about what it teaches us, there is a lot to learn. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

Video from the UK Department of Health "Digital Challenge" project:

Too often patients feel like they’re in the passenger seat when entering the hospital. Even in the best of circumstances — such as planned admissions — patients often don’t feel in control of their own care. One of the most unnecessary issues facing patients when they enter the hospital is untreated (or undertreated) pain. Often the focus of the medical team is to treat a condition, and controlling a patient’s pain comes second. Fortunately, this doesn’t need to be the situation. Here are a few tips for patients to ensure that their pain does not go overlooked: Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

This spectacular image was taken by Indiana University research associate Jane Stout and depicts a scene from mitosis where chromosomes (highlighted in blue) are pulled apart by hook-like kinetochores (shown in green) and spindle fibers (marked in red). The photo took first place in the microscopy category of the most recent GE Healthcare Life Sciences Cell Imaging Competition and was featured on an electronic billboard in Times Square last month. Stout explained in an Indiana University news story the significance of the photo: This particular high-resolution image allowed us to see individual strands within bundles of specialized structures that form the spindle, whereas before we could only infer the bundled structure from other types of imaging and assays… In future images, we hope to see where the different members of the protein family act on the spindle to learn how their movements are coordinated to regulate the entire process of DNA segregation. Photo by Indiana University

The Cardiff University Centre for Language and Communication has made available FuzzyLaw, an online collection of “lay-people’s explanations of legal terms.” Here is the description from the project’s Website: FuzzyLaw has gathered explanations of legal terms from members of the public in order to get a sense of what the ‘person on the street’ has in mind when they think of a legal term. By making lay-people’s explanations of legal terms available to interpreters, police and other legal professionals, we hope to stimulate debate and learning about word meaning, public understanding of law and the nature of explanation. The explanations gathered in FuzzyLaw are unusual in that they are provided by members of the public. These people, all aged over 18, regard themselves as ‘native speakers’, ‘first language speakers’ and ‘mother tongue’ speakers of English and have lived in England and/or Wales for 10 years or more. We might therefore expect that they will understand English legal terminology as well as any member of the public might. No one who has contributed has ever worked in the criminal law system or as an interpreter or translator. They therefore bring no special expertise to the task of explanation, beyond whatever their daily life has provided. We have gathered explanations for 37 words in total. You can see a sample of these explanations on FuzzyLaw. The sample of explanations is regularly updated. You can also read responses to the terms and the explanations from mainly interpreters, police officers and academics. You are warmly invited to add your own responses and join in the discussion of each and every word. Check back regularly to see how discussions develop and consider bookmarking the site for future visits. The site also contains commentaries on interesting phenomena which have emerged through the site. You can respond to the commentaries too on that page, contributing to the developing research project. FuzzyLaw is based in Cardiff, Wales, and explores English words as they are used in the criminal legal system of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The examples and discussions that you will find here are, however, also relevant to languages other than English, legal jurisdictions around the world, and legal settings beyond only criminal law. This is because these examples and discussions concern meaning and explore words in a variety of contexts of use in the law. [...] For more details please see the FuzzyLaw Website. HT @SquareLaw Filed under: Data sets Tagged: Cardiff University Centre for Language and Communication, Citizens' explanations of criminal law terms, Citizens' explanations of legal language, Citizens' explanations of legal words, Citizens' understanding of legal words, Citizens' understandings of criminal law terms, Citizens' understandings of legal language, Citizens' understandings of legal words, Criminal law terminology, Criminal law terms, Fuzzy Law, FuzzyLaw, Lay persons' explanations of criminal law terms, Lay persons' explanations of legal language, Lay persons' explanations of legal words, Lay persons' understandings of criminal law terms, Lay persons' understandings of legal language, Lay persons' understandings of legal words, Legal communication, Legal language

I empathize with people who don’t take an active role in their health care decisions. There are real barriers to any of us really getting engaged: limited information about price and quality, a perpetuated culture of “doctor knows best,” and a daunting and confusing set of rules about coverage. Who wants to think about it? There are only so many minutes in the day or neurons in the brain. So, we allocate our limited time, energy, and attention to the things that matter—right now. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

Not old enough to remember any sort of “glory day” in medicine, I still enjoy hearing from older colleagues who recount days when they were respected, paid fairly, and able to practice medicine autonomously at the highest and most uncompromising level. What was that like, I wonder? For five years, I’ve been a busy practicing anesthesiologist. And for five years, I’ve listened carefully to and cataloged the gripes and woes of all types of physicians around me: surgeons, obstetricians, primary care doctors, and fellow anesthesiologists. I have one conclusion from all this listening. Doctors feel defeated. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.

The team presented his story during pre-rounds. He had lived his life “cleanly”, not smoking or drinking, eating in moderation. Recently he had a malignant disease present, and now had a new metastasis. As a physician, we want to like all patients, but in fact, we have favorites. This man engendered respect and concern from the first time we entered his room. In trying to reconstruct our response, I feel at a loss. I cannot explain this feeling, that I suspect all physicians have regularly. We just want to do a bit more for some patients. From the first time we met him, he knew that his prognosis was poor. We worked on considering a treatment for the metastasis, but then another symptom occurred, and we discovered widespread metastases. Each day when we visited his room, I girded myself for the conversation. Each day I left the room feeling a bit better. Each conversation could have been much more difficult had he and family not been so understanding and appreciative. We had the conversation about treating the patient and not the disease, because we could not defeat the disease. We made clear that we would not stop treating the patient. Each day he encouraged me, not explicitly, but implicitly. Each day I sat at his bedside and held his hand. We made certain that all his symptoms were well controlled. We made certain that the family agreed with the patient’s plan. An important lesson occurs to most physicians over time. We can cure some diseases; we can slow the progression of some diseases; we can prevent the complications of some diseases, or at least delay those complications; but we should always remember that we are treating patients, not diseases. When we can no longer impact the disease, our responsibility does not change. Patients, not diseases, are our responsibility. We must always remember that.

We skipped yesterday’s prompt on Diabetes Blog Week for our regular weekly advice column, so today we bring you two treats: First, our Sunday Funnies, addressing the Saturday D-Blog Week prompt… Diabetes Art. Hey, dance is an art form ya…The post Sunday Funnies: Ballroom Diabetes + Our D-Blog Week Faves appeared first on DiabetesMine: the all things diabetes blog.

After six weeks in the accelerated bachelor of science in nursing program at the University of Rochester, I was already on clinical rotations in the hospital. I was learning clinical functions that my second-year medical school friends had no idea how to perform: catheterizations, wound dressing changes, how to calculate and administer medications.  There’s just not enough time in the first two years. On the other hand, in the nursing program, our heavy clinical schedule doesn’t provide us much time to perfect writing SOAP notes (or subjective/objective assessment and plan), for example, which medical students practice every day.  It was clear that we were each acquiring distinct knowledge and skills that we could share with each other — if given the chance. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.