Hey All, Next Tuesday, February 14th, I will be hosting a Valentine’s Day version of Medical Grand Rounds. @GrandRounds is a weekly roundup of submitted posts from medical bloggers, the world over. Each week a host agrees to organize and link the many submissions. This week’s GR was hosted by the one and only EndoGoddess. […]
Category: Doctoring
How do doctors decide on treatments? How do you decide? And yes, you should decide! What inputs go into making this important decision? Let me make it simple. Basically, there are only four. (As they say in the Hamburg EP lab…â€It’s easy.â€) First, since I am an older doctor, I’ll start with… Risks: In deciding […]
The Practice of Medicine inspires I feel compelled to write because I am passionate about my work. For most doctors, Medicine plays out like a roller coaster—ups, downs and plenty of whooshes. It’s rarely dull. Doctor writers care about their work; we want it to be better. We need to tell the stories, and hope […]
Cardiac devices were in the news today. And you guessed it; the reports centered on problems. In this case the story includes dramatic visuals. The St Jude defibrillator wire, Riata, a commonly-used wire has been ‘recalled’ by the FDA because of electrical failures in at least 10% of cases. The dramatic part here includes the […]
The gusty winds of healthcare reform have recently swept through my city, Louisville KY. Similar to what is happening across the US, hospitals in Louisville seek consolidation. Strength be in numbers and in control of patients. The problem with merging University of Louisville Hospital (public), Jewish Hospital and St Mary’s and Elizabeth Hospital (both private) […]
The chart reads, “here for 6-month AF ablation follow-up.†My eyes track first to the palpitations box. None. Then the ECG. Regular. Good. That’s a relief. Sweet! Knowing he was free of symptoms and in regular rhythm, I bounced into the room. “How are you?” He looked well. Observe. Always observing, us doctors. I just got […]
My last post centered upon the funny-sounding word, ‘parallax.’ I was using it to describe how middle-age athletes see their sport. But it seems to me that parallax relates to healthcare policy. First, the definition: Parallax: an apparent change in the position of an object resulting from a change in position of the observer. Here […]
I learned a lot from putting together an abstract for a national heart meeting. More than just learning how to e-submit, e-upload and e-print a large poster; More than what t-tests and chi-squares measure; More than learning that females respond differently to AF ablation; And surely more than which coffee shop offers the best work […]
I read an interesting story about young doctors today. American Medical News reported that the changing desires of resident doctors poses recruiting challenges for practices. It’s an eye-opener–a look into the future of healthcare. It seems young docs want unusual things from their career in Medicine. The new generation of doctors seek employment, not partnership, […]
Don’t misread this as a political statement, but I really like reading David Brooks. He makes me think; his take on things helps me understand what’s happening in the world around me. He’s smart, thoughtful and considers both sides of an argument before taking a stand. That’s what good doctors do. (And to be honest, […]
I recently wrote a post about what happens when the elderly get sick. It was meant to accelerate the conversation about how modern medicine can’t make us immortal. I meant to say that doctors need to learn to be less ashamed of death. And that patients should at least hear about the risks of life-prolonging […]