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When Pain Never Goes Away, How Can Doctors Help?
New Study Shows "Nearly Everyone with HIV Can Be Treated Effectively"
Pandemic Flu Monitor: H1N1...The Whole World Over
One Hour of Exercise a Day Helps Teens at Genetic Risk for Obesity to Keep Weight Normal
Obese Kids 63% More Likely to Be Bullied than Average-Weight Classmates
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How Can a Doctor Choose Medications for Patients Without Data Comparing New Ones to Existing Ones? Half of the Time, They Don’t Have That
Sex Research Review: WSJ Columnist Tells You What’s What
Watch Out for Diet Used by Mother of Bride for Royal Wedding
Victims and Bullies Spend More Time with School Nurses, Study Says
Would You Spend All You Had to Buy Time If You Had Cancer? See Who Would or Wouldn’t
Archives: How To Speak Doctor
So, Tell Me, How Does Your Dishwasher Hurt, Doctor?
There are many bad jokes comparing doctors and plumbers. In an opinion article by Kent A. Sepkowitz, vice chairman at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, he makes the comparison himself. He hasn’t had a lot of great experiences with plumbers. He was startled to realize he did some of the same things the plumbers do when they have heard about this problem too many times before. Read this candid self-assessment from an expert at an international cancer center.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
Desktop Medicine Is 21st Century Medicine…This Could Be A Good Thing, Says JAMA
Many TPR items are about the value of time in health matters. This excerpt from a full, free commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, explains a new kind of medicine: Desktop medicine. It explains why doctors are at computer terminals so much of the time and why this is here to stay. It can work for the doctor-patient relationship if done right. It won’t be easy to do, however.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
Time Is a Powerful Tool for M.D.s and Patients Alike…And There Is Too Little of It
Time is not on our side. It is not on the side of the doctors. It is not on the side of the patients. It is not on the side of their families. There has not been enough time for decades. New research comes out every day. Technologies change constantly. The administrative time needed for patient care passed absurd a long time ago. We need meaningful documentation of patient care. We do not need time-wasters, the number of which keep growing like kudzu.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
You Own Your Medical Record…But Do You Really Want to Know What It Says?
There is a new project underway to test whether it is helpful or hurtful if patients can read their doctors’ notes. In addition to technical information, records include observations about the patient’s mood, worries or other personal information. The question is whether the cost of transparency is a loss of it. Doctors could start putting less in the record, making it less valuable to other care-givers. The fear of litigation also could make doctors more guarded about their notes. This is not an easy call, even for people who believe patients should know the truth.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
JAMA Study Shows 64% of Doctors Would Report Impaired Colleagues…69% Say “Prepared” to Deal with It In Their Own Practices
Everyone agrees bad doctors should be stopped. The hard part is figuring out how best to do that. In a JAMA study, researchers found that 64% of doctors participating supported the profession’s commitment to police itself. That number should be much higher. On the other hand, 69% said that they were ready to deal with impaired physicians in their own practices, the medical equivalent of home. That is a much more encouraging number, almost 70%. Reporting bad doctors—sick or unskilled—is essential to safe, quality care. It is not possible to pay too much attention to this topic. Read here about what patients can do when they feel they have seen a doctor with serious problems.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
Why Talk Therapy Is Fastest Treatment When a Patient Is in Distress
Talk therapy has fallen out of favor in many places because medications have become the mainstay of many psychiatric patients’ treatment. Health plan reimbursement favors pills over talk. However, talk therapy has an important place in treatment. It’s faster than medication, as you will read about here, when the patient is in real difficulty.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
A New Category of Hospital Does Not Measure Up on Survival Rates
A new category of hospital—the acute care, long-term care hospital—has been developed for patients who need longer to recover from a critical illness than is usual for a short-stay hospital. Those are the hospitals in your community which have been there for years. Why do these new ones exist? General acute care facilities need the beds and may have a financial incentive to discharge patients sooner, says the comment on this Journal Watch summary. The survival rates one year after discharge are extremely low. In 2008, Medicare put a 3-year hold on any new construction of these hospitals. Be aware. Beware of your family member’s being transferred to one without knowing what their outcomes are. Get the patient’s own doctor involved in this process, too.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
Dying Patients and Families Need More Communications with Care-givers
This study, while it has a number of limitations, suggests that patients and families need to have much more clinical information than they get from care-givers.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
“The Essential Business Model of Medical Insurance Will Have to Change”
An innovative health care system in Pennsylvania is paying for chronic disease nurses to work in primary care offices to help alert the doctor to patients who need to come in quickly and to help prevent avoidable hospitalizations.
Topics: How To Speak Doctor, News
Early Menopause Is “Potential” Risk Factor for Heart Disease
The full Reuters story quotes the lead researcher as saying that this study does not show causality—early menopause directly causes heart events.
It does show that early menopause is a potential risk factor for heart disease.
Women who had an early menopause, in this study set at age 46, and their doctors should discuss ways to reduce [...]
Topics: How To Speak Doctor
