Over the weekend, I watched a speech by Dr. Mike Evans about using social media to educate patients and caregivers. Dr Evans is an academic family medicine doctor who also runs a media lab. He makes those famous whiteboard presentations, such as 23 and 1/2 hours, which now has more than 4-million views. His talk […]
Category: Social Media/Writing/Blogging
I was pleased when the editors of the TheHeart.org reposted my recent essay, Let’s Stop the Unnecessary Treatment of Heart Disease. As of this morning, there are 167 comments. The majority of them were positive, and supportive of lifestyle promotion. Negative comments represented a small minority, but were notable in their vigor, and occasionally reached […]
Hey Everyone, It’s been a few days since I returned home from Spain. The jet leg has resolved and normal sleep patterns have returned. I’ve had time to review the entire ESC program book. What follows is a review of my work and some notes on the past week in Barcelona. The first thing to […]
The 2014 European Society of Cardiology Congress begins tomorrow in Barcelona, Spain. I’m here with my colleagues from the theheart.org Medscape | Cardiology to cover the action. ESC is special because it is such a large meeting, with over 30,000 registered attendees and more than 500 journalists. This year’s addition has an added flair–as the […]
More than a few commenters recently noted something disturbing in my writing. They said my words are increasingly taking a blame-the-patient tone. That bothers me. Of all people, I know about making imperfect health choices. These comments got me thinking about striking the right balance in writing about health, say, between apathy and defeatism, (oh […]
When Dr Eduardo Hernandez Castillo (@CardioLeaks) asked me to come to Mexico to speak with a group of physicians about the power of social media, I paused. Should I go to Mexico? I have been traveling a lot; it was a long trip; I was just starting to get fit again, and the atrial fibrillation/anticoagulation […]
The good thing about vacation is that time off is essential. The bad thing is the reentry, which, lately, is harried enough to induce arrhythmia. Almost. Thankfully, I made it through the reentry week and now sit in peace on Saturday morning with my MacBook. I thought I would tell you a little about my […]
(This blog was born from writing race reports for a masters bike racing team. What follows is of that form. It’s a little longer than I like, and, therefore, as an antidote, no more than a few hundred words occur without an image.) It’s intriguing how experiences get burned into the brain’s memory center. I […]
CardioStim is the name given to the biennial gathering of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) in the Mediterranean resort city of Nice, France. This was my first (ever) trip to France. As most of you know, I write an electrophysiology column (blog) called Trials and Fibrillations over at theHeart.org, which is now called Medscape […]
Hey Everyone, I recently returned from the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in San Francisco. I attended the meeting as both a physician-journalist-columnist for theHeart.org and as a practicing electrophysiologist. As it so often is with international meetings, I returned energized and rejuvenated about the practice of medicine. Medical meetings are great this way. It’s quite […]
One of the selfish reasons I love being a physician is the honor of being included in such a respectable group. Doctors are good people, smart people, dedicated people. These are my colleagues, my mates, my fraternity. This attachment to the honor of doctoring is why it pains me when we hurt ourselves with our […]