The pink bag that symbolizes how far this physician has come

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [Survey results]: Mobility is the future of health care communications, though the particulars of that future remain in flux. Now in its fifth year, Spok's annual Mobility in Healthcare Survey is starting to reveal some longer-term trends in addition to annual snapshots. [Get the results now]. [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. Money talks: Discussing cost of care up front with patients can [help prevent malpractice claims] -- especially when patients are [unhappy with the treatment outcome]. [Video]: Hear from University of Utah Health Care's CIO and CMIO on communications and patient care. [Watch the video]. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Today: Nov. 3, 2016 [Breast is best shouldn’t be absolute. Here’s why.] I read another post about the poison of GMO, corn syrup, baby formula. One more post in an extensive newsfeed. It is opinion, and I can scroll past, but it feels like another not so subtle reminder of the “breast is best” undercurrent that permeates everything baby related. As a physician, I feel that breastfeeding […] [The pink bag that symbolizes how far this physician has come] When I graduated from medical school, my dad gave me several hundred dollars with instructions to buy something special. It was a kind gesture, but the pressure to self-select a meaningful gift was almost too much. I wanted something to commemorate my transition from student to doctor. Books, stethoscopes, and the like seemed so uninventive. […] [A game of broken telephone in the hospital] Sometimes an interesting thing happens on patient rounds. Rounds are a traditional exercise in hospitals going back at least a century. In the old days, this meant the physician going from patient to patient. He (it was nearly always he back then) went over the patient’s progress with the bedside nurse, examined the patient, reviewed […] [Is the art of medicine dead?] If you attended medical school, you learned in week one that American health care started becoming scientific in 1910, with the publication of the Flexner Report. Before then, only some medical schools were authentic while many others were anything from carnival booths to outright frauds. Abraham Flexner, a respected educator, had been hired by industrial […] [Boo! Being a physician can be downright scary] You won’t find me at any haunted houses this weekend. I don’t need any costumed creeps jumping out at me when I least (or most) expect it. I’ve never been a huge fan of strobe lights, fog machines, bad makeup, or canned Vincent Price laughter. My day job is scary enough. Some like to say that anesthesia […] [Why this physician stopped prescribing birth control] Her 17-year-old legs dangled over the edge of the exam table. She had come for a prescription of oral contraceptives. Her boyfriend, she said, had been patient. He wasn’t ready to be a father, and so they were waiting. But lately he had started to put the pressure on and asked her to come in. […] [A medical student faces looming death and new life in one day] One cold February morning during my third year of medical school, I walked through the entrance of the rural hospital where I was doing a nine-month rotation and made my way to the nurses’ station. Feeling the warmth return to my face, I set down my coat and bag and hung my stethoscope around my […] [Eliminate the stereotypes about female doctors] Someone told me that the reason certain others don’t respect my advocacy on behalf of physicians more is simply that I am a woman. I am seeing this the more I speak up on issues facing doctors these days. It is now the 21st century, and there are a large number of women practicing medicine. […] [A letter to health care technologists] Dear health care technologist or regulator, The world of health care is changing exponentially. Speaking as one the nation’s over 800,000 physicians, I can confidently say that most of us understand the fact that the current health care system is unsustainable, and can’t carry on as is. There are many potential solutions to explore, and […] [Why do patients accept chemotherapy, but not flu shots?] Fall brings school buses, a freshening breeze and an avalanche of meetings. There are seasonal sales, myriad projects and the splendor of colored leaves. The season is also announced, again and again, by a particular peculiar and perilous decision, which, no matter how much I try, I do not fully understand. Frankly, I just don’t […] [Top 5 reasons why medical students need to volunteer] As the process of applying to medical school and residency becomes hyper-competitive, we medical students often feel forced to pursue our passions only in ways that are “high yield.” It may seem counterintuitive, but the further we go in our medical training, the more inertia we seem to have about giving our time and energy […] [Use generous orthodoxy to drive health care change] “You must respect the body you are trying to heal.” I heard this said twice into my headphones, the second time more slowly and firmly than the first, while I sat on the runway about to take off. It continued to echo in my head over the course of the flight. As a physician, the […] [Does practice really make perfect?] It is one of the most boring truisms on the planet: “Practice makes perfect.” It is also one of the most misleading. Practice merely ingrains certain patterns after deciding on the best course of action after constant criticism and problem-solving. Performance requires that the body forget the work required to ingrain the pattern and let […] [Do you know what your staff is saying about palliative care?] Do you know what the operator or person at the front desk is saying about palliative care? When people call, saying the want palliative care, how are they responding? A study being presented in abstract form at the palliative care and oncology research symposium addresses this simple but critical question. Researchers at Duke (Kathryn Hutchins, […] [5 obstacles to texting patients] The business value of medication adherence tools is coming into focus. For years, I remarked that, while we could create a case for why adherence was the right thing to do, we had great difficulty creating the right financial incentives to move these programs from curiosity to scale. That is changing now with the collision […] [A psychiatrist says don’t spank your children. Praise them instead.] Spanking is an extremely common form of corporal punishment, generally used against a child in response to a perceived bad behavior. It is an old-fashioned form of punishment that has the potential to cause more harm than good. It is clear that spanking may be effective in causing immediate obedience, but this effect is short-lived. […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Follow on Facebook] | [Twitter] --------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the KevinMD e-newsletter. 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