This is the deadly virus you need to look out for

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [The missing piece to your EHR]( 6 ways to bolster the benefits of your EHR by improving communications in your hospital. [Get the eBrief now](. Technology is changing the way we practice medicine -- [bringing unanticipated safety consequences](. Here’s what doctors need to know about the [dangers lurking in their EHR system](. [Is your hospital communication system trapped in the dark ages?]( Just like a medieval page boy, pagers are annoying and inefficient. This leads to delayed patient care, frustrated providers, and potential HIPAA breaches. Learn why you need to ditch your [Page Boy]( today. [Video]( See how Peninsula Regional Medical Center reduces code call activation from minutes to seconds. [Watch now](. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Dec. 4, 2017 [This is the deadly virus you need to look out for]( Days are getting shorter and evenings are getting cooler in temperate regions in the Northern hemisphere. This also means that the flu season will be around the corner soon. Most people group influenza (flu) and cold together and refer to the “cold and flu season” as the time of the year when we expect to […] [An emergency physician travels to Puerto Rico. Here’s what she saw.]( “In Puerto Rico, we call those plants morir vivir,” said a patient who sat by the side of the road while we checked her blood sugar. When I reached to touch the small fern, it swiftly closed its leaves shut, and then after a few minutes cautiously reopened. As a young doctor I was fascinated […] [How to stay out of the ER this holiday season: advice from an emergency medicine doctor]( The holiday season is stressful enough without having to try to fit a visit to the emergency department (ED) in your schedule. Getting medical care on a major holiday can be especially difficult because most, if not all, offices and urgent cares are closed. This can make the ED wait longest around the holidays. Here […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Physician Finance @ KevinMD]( Know as much about finance as you do about medicine. Featuring medicine and money's best. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognize the many accomplishments of black men in medicine: #BlackMenInMedicine]( There were fewer black men enrolling in medical school in 2014 than in 1978. In a world where the first black president of the United States was elected nearly a decade ago with many declaring it to be a new day of progress for blacks in America, statistics such as this one come as a […] [How to inspire medical students to pursue primary care]( I distinctly remember the excitement I felt during my first year of medical school when exposed to the breadth of general and specialty fields that seemed all so equally rewarding and medically influential. I envisioned myself holistically understanding my patient, seeing the problem in the context of her other medical issues, her personality, her family […] [What baseball can teach doctors]( Baseball, like medicine, is deeply imbued with a sense of tradition, and no team more so than the New York Yankees, disdainful of innovations like placing players’ names on the backs of their jerseys and resistant to eroding strict standards related to haircuts and beards. It’s why doctors and patients alike should pay special attention to […] [5 shifts to move health care in the right direction]( The truth about change in health care was never more perfectly captured than in an episode of Sex and the City, when Carrie Bradshaw lamented that we keep “should-ing all over ourselves.” In the past decade, those of us on the front lines of health care have seen the passage of nine major pieces of […] [There shouldn’t be a debate about funding CHIP]( On September 30th of this year, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) ran out of federal funding. While CHIP has not received as much publicity as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it has had a major impact on the American population: providing health insurance for 9 million children who would otherwise not be insured. Despite […] [What it’s like to practice medicine behind bars]( I hear many comments and genuine inquiries about being a physician in a prison. They’re all well-meaning yet hint at how little is known about this world on the “inside” and those who inhabit it. I take my time answering questions about the complexities of practicing behind bars, yet also highlight that despite the challenges, […] [Do medical experts really know best?]( “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s view, there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki was writing about Zen beginners and masters, but this concept applies to the practice of medicine as well. Experienced physicians are slow to accept a new paradigm, while medical students and new physicians are more open. Sometimes, […] [Make more than your spouse? Here’s how to save money on taxes.]( The only time my husband outearned me was during our first three years of marriage when I was still in residency and working 80-plus hours per week earning less than minimum wage per hour. Since then, despite graduating in a professional degree, we have made relocation moves that primarily help with my career growth, to […] [How being an immigrant shaped the way I treat patients]( I was born in Shanghai, China. In September 2000, my parents and I left behind our family and friends, a language and culture dear to our hearts and social and financial stability to immigrate to the United States. I was six at the time. Although I don’t claim to have fully understood the weight of […] [3 ways to fix end-of-life care]( Anyone with even the slightest passing interest in health care, has heard the mind-blowing statistics. As a nation, we spend almost 3.5 trillion dollars on health care. To put that into perspective, that is more than the total GDP of every country in the world apart from China and Japan! Germany, next on the list, […] [If we are serious about addressing the opioid epidemic, this is what we should do]( Multiple state leaders, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, and even President Trump have declared states of emergency in response to the opioid epidemic. Policymakers claim to be battling this public health crisis on all fronts, but one arena continues to be conspicuously ignored: our prisons and jails. Roughly half of all incarcerated individuals suffer from […] [What happens to our brains in space?]( Humans evolved with the constant force of the earth’s gravity. This is relevant to several of our organs, but the brain’s anatomy makes it especially important. The brain floats in spinal fluid encased inside the closed box of the skull. Gravity would be expected to affect the details of that. Indeed, studies of people who […] [Doctor: So you made a mistake]( So you made a mistake. I know you’re busy beating yourself up about it. I know that after years and years of training in life-saving medicine you’ve also trained yourself to accept the blame for all sorts of things beyond your control. You’re asking, “How could I have missed that,” or “Why didn’t I think […] [Teaching residents to teach will improve medical education]( Medical residents take on a variety of responsibilities. Some are clear, upfront, and obvious: the responsibilities they have been training for since entering medical school. Coming up with a treatment plan and carrying it out is first and foremost their raison d’etre, and they put an enormous amount of effort into it. However, they also […] [The real reason why the National Health Service survives]( When Aneurin Bevan was asked how he convinced doctors to come on board the National Health Service (NHS) he allegedly replied, “I stuffed their mouths full of gold.” Bevan recognized that to conscript doctors to the largest socialist experiment in health care in the world he had to appeal not so much to their morals, […] [MKSAP: 25-year-old man positive for hepatitis B surface antigen]( Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 25-year-old man is evaluated in follow-up after recently testing positive for hepatitis B surface antigen. He underwent testing as part of the immigration process from Somalia. Two other siblings also have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. On physical examination, he […] [The accused physicians who are my colleagues]( From the earliest days on the clinical wards, everyone probably worked with a senior physician who knew how to game the system. It might be doing a rigid sigmoidoscopy on admission for every patient who had a rectum — something not the standard of care forty years ago. Or maybe it was accepting a pharmaceutical […] [A psychiatrist’s perspective on the digital pill]( One of my readers, Natalie, wondered about my thoughts about the digital pill. My initial reactions were similar to several of those who were interviewed for the article. The digital pill, which provides electronic information to confirm whether someone has ingested the medication, has great potential to become a tool of coercion. Aripiprazole (Abilify) is classified as an […] [Look to online dating for the future of telemedicine]( Online dating is all the rage these days. Statistics suggest that over a third of couples now meet online. For a lot of older readers of this blog, who met their husband or wife the traditional way and are baffled by this whole new world (and don’t get me wrong, there were probably many ways […] [When EMRs crash: It’s time to push back]( The computerized era has introduced all of us to a genre of errors that never existed during the archaic pen and paper era. The paper medical chart I used during most of my career never “crashed.” Now, when our electronic medical records (EMR) freezes, malfunctions, or simply goes on strike, our office is paralyzed. Although […] --------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the KevinMD e-newsletter. If a friend sent you this email and you want to subscribe, go to [KevinMD](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 173 Daniel Webster Highway Nashua, New Hampshire 03062 [Unsubscribe]( | [Change Subscriber Options](