We are in danger of hospitals no longer being safe havens

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors Alarm fatigue is a serious issue: 87% of clinicians say alarms for non-actionable issues occur frequently in their hospital. [Start combating it today]( by downloading this essential guide. [Get it now](. Seven out of 10 physicians are unwilling to recommend their chosen profession to their children or other family members. Find out some of the reasons why in the nationwide [Future of Healthcare Survey]( of over 3,400 physicians. Tech-savvy practices are [ditching manual phone calls]( to communicate with patients. Here are [5 ways]( you can too. [Case study]( Discover how University of Maryland Capital Region Health improved staff communications and reduced the time to deploy critical codes by 50%. [Read now](. Health care needs a purpose-built identity governance strategy. [Find out why](. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Nov 12, 2018 [We are in danger of hospitals no longer being safe havens]( On the outside, most American hospitals appear completely modernized. If resources are utilized correctly, they appear equipped for any disaster, any CMS audit and any surprise joint commission inspection that may come. The procedural appearance of hospitals seems robust and reflective to medicine in the 21st century. However, the framework for the daily function of […] [Physicians are trapped between patient satisfaction and unnecessary prescribing]( I don’t mean to pick on McDonald’s. Insert any other large retail business where customer satisfaction massively trumps every other consideration of the relationship between employee and customer. Telemedicine companies have exploded the past few years. I suspect a lot of my readers have already seen this, but just in case not, a recent study in […] [Are physician wellness programs just another checkbox?]( Recently, I saw a photo of a slide from the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress: “The Program Directors Guide to Implementation of Well-being Programs.” While I applaud the ongoing focus in medicine on wellness for both trainees and faculty, I am troubled by the perceived need to standardize and program wellness, creating a “checkbox” […] [This attending learned so much from her residents]( While riding shotgun in the family minivan on the way home from a fall break water park trip, I received the following text message: I thought of you today! One of the residents here had done a great job with a complex (and really sad) labor and delivery patient, and the nurse was telling me […] [Be a master at your craft by taking time each day to truly rest]( I am bad at taking vacations — really bad. It’s not that I don’t take days off or even travel on days off. It’s my near inability to actually unplug and not bring work with me. Despite recovering from a level of burnout a few years ago that left me considering quitting medicine altogether, I […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Conference planners!]( Find vetted, handpicked physician speakers that shine on stage. Now booking for 2019! Physician Speaking by KevinMD: [Your audience deserves the best](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [How do health insurance companies harm patients?]( Health care policy has been a hotly debated political topic for many years now. In recent years, new laws passed the halls of Congress while others failed to gain any traction. Despite the rules that have rolled out, health insurance companies have been in the driver’s seat for decades. While spokespersons for the health insurance […] [We need more behavioral health treatment in primary care]( I don’t know how many times a patient has told me, “I was in therapy once, and it didn’t help.” My response is always: “That’s like saying ‘I saw a movie once and I didn’t like it’.” That usually breaks the ice just a little. In primary care, we certainly run into a few patients […] [A CT scan for kidney cancer? It may depend on where you live.]( About one in fifty people reading this essay will be diagnosed with kidney cancer at some time in their life. In fact, one out of one people writing this essay has already been diagnosed with kidney cancer. (I had a small tumor removed from my left kidney not long after I turned 50.) But how many people […] [A medical student as storyteller and story-listener]( “Sondor” is a made-up internet neologism that captures the fleeting but poignant sense of “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness.” I think about this word often when I see my patients. Everyone […] [Urgent care isn’t the answer to our broken system]( I’ve only worked four shifts of urgent care so far, but four 12-hour shifts means I’ve seen a lot: a lot of patients, a lot of different ailments, a lot of different reasons that people come to urgent care centers. I have to admit that this has been a breath of fresh air for me; […] [PSA-based screening for prostate cancer: Interpreting the changing guidelines]( Comparing the 2018 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation statement on prostate cancer screening in the October 15th issue of American Family Physician with its previous recommendation, the first question family physicians ought to ask is: What new evidence compelled the USPSTF to move from recommending against PSA screening in all men to determining that there was a small net […] [The main difference between functional medicine and evidence-based medicine]( Figuring out what’s actually true is far harder than most people realize. Our brains are both hypothesis-generating machines and incredibly credulous. As a result, most of the things we believe to be true turn out to be false. We don’t just mistakenly believe that vaccines cause autism, that the flu shot can give us the […] [The carefully crafted way of how health misinformation spreads]( Effective clickbait doesn’t just happen. It’s carefully crafted. Take this wildly misleading article from CNN: Not exercising worse for your health than smoking, diabetes, and heart disease, study reveals. It’s one example — among many generated daily by various news outlets — of how a mundane observational study can be transformed into viral internet gold. In the days […] [Doctors are pawns of the health care system]( Doctors and other caretakers are the pawns of the health care system. We provide the services that allow hospitals and medical groups to bring in big revenue. Unless we are contracting directly with insurers, doctors will never realize the true financial firepower that we have. As the health care environment evolves, we are seeing fewer […] [You can measure the pulse of a hospital by its coffee shop]( I think you can tell a lot about how things are going in a hospital based on the amount of consumption of coffee by its employees. Visit the Starbucks, Au Bon Pain, Roasterie, Einstein Brothers, or whatever coffee shop inhabits square footage in your hospital, and I’d venture to say that you can take the pulse […] [8 tips to land the residency of your dreams]( After countless hours of hard work and three demanding years of medical school, it’s now time to face the spotlight! If your interview invites have started rolling in and you are feeling intimidated by the thought, follow these tips to land your first choice of clinical residency. 1. Be prompt with your responses to interview invites […] [Slow thinking and machine learning in medicine]( Recently, several high-profile institutions have called attention to the issue of inclusion and equity when artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are applied in medicine. Leaders from the law, medicine, social sciences and computer sciences are speaking out about the challenges of using smart algorithms to solve social problems. While this topic might easily be dismissed as […] [MKSAP: 64-year-old man seen after an intraoperative liver biopsy]( Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 64-year-old man is evaluated in follow-up after recent abnormal findings on intraoperative liver biopsy. Two days ago he underwent right colon resection for a large villous adenoma with high-grade dysplasia. At the time of surgery, an abnormal-appearing liver was noted […] [How to deal with politics in the workplace]( This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. Daily headlines in newspapers and on websites across the nation and around the Internet seem to inspire and anger, and it’s only natural that politics is a topic on everyone’s mind. We’re all concerned about the economy. We’re all eager to see our political leaders solve the problem […] [The complex expectations of patients toward their physicians]( When my father reached his mid-80s, an accelerating accumulation of physical and mental functioning issues persuaded him to switch to a primary care physician in a concierge medical practice. Although the doctor’s pedigree proclaimed his competence, he mostly excelled as the medical equivalent of a hotel concierge who can magically procure hard-to-get restaurant reservations at […] [The civilian casualties of being a doctor]( As an ER doctor, I often meet people on the worst day of their lives. I’m the guy who gets to tell you your mom is dead. I’m the one who works the futile code on your four-year-old, while your screams cut right through everyone in the room. I find your cancer. I tell you […] [It is time for stewardship of our health insurance system]( The bloated nature of health insurance in the United States has been a much-discussed topic in recent years. Particularly with the advent of the Affordable Health Care Act as well in response to physicians’ frustrations and increasing burnout from dealing with the constraints imposed on them by insurance companies, and at times being forced to […] --------------------------------------------------------------- If a friend sent you this email and you want to subscribe, go to [KevinMD](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 345 Hudson Street New York NY 10014 USA [Unsubscribe]( | [Change Subscriber Options](