Doctors shouldn’t be afraid of the hippies

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [Survey results]: More than 100 IT leaders revealed the business goals behind their mobile workflow investments. [Read the eBrief 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. What happens when a doctor is [diagnosed with the very condition he treats]? How does he manage his care? This has important lessons for how we can improve the [ever-evolving doctor-patient relationship]. [Case study]: Learn how Banner Health significantly improves the process for code blue and NICU alerts. [Get it now]. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Today: Dec. 8, 2016 [An American doctor experiences UK emergency care firsthand] Two years ago, I wrote about my experience in a London emergency department with my son Victor. That post has since been viewed over 450,000 times. There are over 800 comments with no trolls (a feat unto itself), and almost all of them express love for the National Health Service. I was in England again […] [Doctor mom, remember that it is all worth it] Dear doctor mom, I’ve been a physician for 13 years. For the past 7 years, I have also been a mom. A growing number of experiences made me decide to write this letter. I hope other moms don’t attack me. I do not mean to downplay their struggles, or to insinuate that doctor moms necessarily […] [Doctors shouldn’t be afraid of the hippies] ZDoggMD’s take on mind-body medicine: “Western medicine has historically been appropriately skeptical of so-called mind-dody approaches, given our tendency to want to explain causality in terms of molecules, receptors, and other such reductionism. After all, what do we call ‘alternative medicine’ that actually works? Medicine … Let’s study it more, and let’s stop being afraid of […] [Give the outside hospital the respect it deserves] OSH, or “outside hospital,” is one of those abbreviations that has crept into the lexicon of hospital jargon that merits additional scrutiny. What are the implications of calling another health care facility “outside”; does that make your hospital the “inside” hospital? I suspect that it is, as many patient-related conditions are described, multifactorial. Or, if […] [We need to know these 3 facts to fight to opioid crisis] Dear President-elect Trump, On the campaign trail, you referred to the opioid epidemic plaguing the nation a “tremendous problem” — and it is. You claimed that this crisis could be mitigated by building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to “cut off the source.” You promised to dedicate resources to get afflicted Americans treated. […] [The division in our country is barely visible in the hospital] In a time when the deep divisions in our country have become increasingly apparent, I, perhaps like you, have been seeking hope. I supposed hope would come in the form of an enlightened article or a profound speech, but it did not. Hope came to me in the form of my patients. The division you […] [Urban Meyer has a message for you, doctor] It’s hard to find time to pay attention to all the messages I receive. There are voicemails, emails (work, blog, and personal), and the nonstop notifications from Facebook and Twitter. Post-it Notes on the desk and the refrigerator. I am bombarded with messages. Urban Meyer, head coach of the Ohio State football team, doesn’t have a […] [Medicine isn’t just about accuracy and efficiency] As a family practice resident, I’ve found that a premium is placed not only on my clinical acumen but also on how well I respond to my patients’ mental and emotional experience of illness. Yet the work of learning to be a doctor is just that — work. (And in overwhelming amounts.) Time management becomes […] [Buprenorphine: One way works. One doesn’t.] Buprenorphine was a fantastic drug in the emergency department. Patients would come to our ED feeling awful from opiate withdrawal, and we made them feel so much better. We can recall so many patients coming in vomiting, anxious, sweaty, dehydrated, and looking awful — and with one or two shots of buprenorphine, we made them […] [The days of the drug rep have come to an end] As I sit behind a computer in my office today at the physician’s workstation, I am baffled at the steady flow of pharmaceutical representatives that flow into our office on a daily basis. Each rep comes in with a fancy glossy print detailing the data concerning their particular drug. My office is busy; patients are […] [Let’s stop being skeptical about statins] If you’re going to indulge in anticipatory medicine, it is best to anticipate those at highest risk. An elegant study by Wald et al in the NEJM shows how precision primary prevention can be done. The researchers screened toddlers, who presented routinely to their general practitioners for vaccinations, for an uncommon, but not rare, familial […] [I never want to be a government-employed physician. Here’s why.] Every health care system in the world is facing its fair share of challenges. Aging populations, the exponential increase in chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, expensive new treatments—all at a time when most countries desperately need to curtail rising health care costs to save their economies. At the two extremes, we have […] [Medical service based on socioeconomic status: That’s unacceptable] The patient was in pain and had been for over a year. And it was getting worse, not better. Exhausting all avenues of treatment, I decided it was time to refer him to a pain management doctor. Because of the injury to his back, the patient lost his job and his health care coverage. With […] [We cannot ignore the dysfunctional systems at the heart of how we care] If we want to rein in the costs of the U.S. health care system — now equal to nearly 18 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product — we cannot ignore the fragmented technologies used to help heal and save lives. At first glance, the devices, monitors, electronic health records and machines found in today’s […] [How is lean working in health care? Not so well.] A recent story in U.S. News & World Report described how a Seattle hospital is taking a systems approach in improving health care quality and cutting costs. It said, “Virginia Mason Health System … has looked to adopt many of the much-admired and often-emulated business philosophies from Toyota.” The best-known of those philosophies is the […] [10 things you should know about airline medical emergencies] Man collapses at 30,000 feet. Quick, who’s in charge? Hint: It’s not the doctor. Last month, Dr. Tamika Cross was told to sit down when she tried to help an unresponsive man. Why? Apparently, the flight attendant was looking for an “actual” medical doctor, not a black woman. Turns out she’s not the only doc […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Follow on Facebook] | [Twitter] --------------------------------------------------------------- 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]