This Wednesday, I’d like to talk about how rodents, relationships, and riding relate to intelligence and overall wellness. This idea comes from a nicely written NY Times piece entitled, Does Loneliness Reduce the Benefits of Exercise? Here, Ms Gretchen Reynolds reviews a few intriguing studies about how relationships may affect exercise, stress hormone levels and […]
Category: Doctoring
My colleague, Dr Wes penned a provocative piece this weekend about the role of physician-extenders in the future of health care reform. It was a great piece about a timely topic–a definite glimpse into the future. My introduction to physician-extenders started more than a decade ago when my second child had an ear infection. He […]
I asked my age-matched colleague the other day, “Do you think we will know when it happens to us?” He responded, “I know…I worry about that too.. a lot. I’m getting out before it happens to me.” We were talking about our fears of being labeled as an “old” doctor. Not just old in years, […]
He was an athletic healthy-looking young man. His symptoms were transient and had occurred a while back. He was sent in for a “heart check-up.” We met, and something old-fashioned happened. A history was taken, an exam performed, an inexpensive ECG reviewed and then I said this: “You know what…I think you are OK…I don’t […]
I am in Boston for the annual Boston AF symposium. It’s a serious meeting– on the other side of the spectrum from old-school boondoggles like Echo-Hawaii or Nuclear-Vail. The sessions start at 7 and go into the night. I am sneaking a few observations in during a coffee break. For starters, if snow removal is […]
I was up, the paperwork done, and my hand on the door. “Doc, I have just one more question.” Uh-oh. “My grandson is in medical school, and he wanted me to ask which field of medicine he should go into.” Before I could answer the patient added this zinger: “He wants a field that has […]
Categories
Are ICDs overused?
The medical news of the week nearly shocked me off my bike trainer. It isn’t often that electrophysiology makes the major-network evening news broadcast. The teaser proclaimed…“thousands of heart patients have unnecessary expensive cardiac devices…Should they be removed?” They were talking about ICDs (internal cardiac defibrillators), and were referring to the widely publicized JAMA study […]
This evening, it was around dinner time when I finished seeing the last patient on the card that said, “Morning Rounds.” On the way out, I ran into an old colleague. Back in the 1990s, he was the experienced real-world clinician and I the youngster just out of fellowship. As it often does with old […]
“John…Why are you going out in the cold?” “I need some stuff for work.” “Stuff?” “Pens…those cool felt tip ones that write really dark and bold.” I like it when the ‘Electrophysiology’ note stands out in the chart—like John Hancock’s signature did. Until a few months ago, a pacemaker company used to give out nifty […]
December is always a busy time in the surgical waiting room. It’s all about the deductibles. An ice storm only made matters worse. Nerves were frayed. It was at the busy reception desk where I witnessed an irate family member of a post-op patient accost the friendly secretary. The patient was waiting in the recovery […]
Hey all. Welcome to another edition of Grand Rounds, a collection of writings from medical bloggers, the world-wide. Here are this week’s posts, collated into four chapters, with just a little commentary and a few selected images. Chapter 1: Good Doctoring: —From the poetic Examining Room of Dr Charles, comes the imagery of a doctor’s […]