My post entitled “Who is at fault if a patient doesn’t follow up?” from August was well received. There were many comments on Twitter. Here is some follow-up on following up. A surgeon saw a new patient with...
Read MoreIs it OK for a doctor to give a prisoner medications to induce paralysis, intubate his airway, place him on a ventilator, and perform a rectal examination to look for drugs? Is it OK to threaten a prisoner with the above actions...
Read MoreIn keeping with the mindset of most Americans today, the answer to the question posed in the title of this post is, “the doctor.” American Medical News reports that “Medical liability experts say missed...
Read MoreI was about to write one of my infrequent but famous spoof articles, and the subject was going to be losing weight by dreaming about exercising. For fun, I decided to search the Internet to see if anyone else might have had the...
Read MoreThe New York Times reported that NYU Law School is planning to change its third-year curriculum to better prepare its graduates for the realities of legal practice today. In case you don’t know, law school graduates are having a...
Read MoreMy vote goes to “translation.” The rule is that you must use a qualified medical interpreter for any interview or discussion with a patient who does not understand English. How is lack of understanding defined? It is...
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I normally wouldn’t do this but you need to see excerpts from an article in the Wisconsin...
Read MoreBlogging at his site “Adventures in Emergency Medicine,” Dr. Sam Ko says resident work hours should be limited to 40 per week. Via Twitter, I warned him that I would rebut his assertion. Without any data or...
Read MoreIt is so nice to be right. To summarize what I wrote 2 and 3 years ago, here and here—based on my experience, patients and families will accept the theoretical risk of a future cancer if it means they’ll get an accurate...
Read MoreThe following was posted anonymously as a comment on a blog I wrote about the difficulty one has in choosing a medical specialty. I was so taken with it that I wanted to give it more exposure. [Note: The comment contained a few...
Read MoreIn a post 2 weeks ago, I discussed why elderly patients don’t get out of bed and walk when hospitalized. You can read it here. I wrote that a major reason that staff does not have time to walk patients is that they are too...
Read MoreA paper in April’s JAMA Surgery journal noted that patient satisfaction ratings have very little to do with the quality of care provided by a hospital. The study analyzed data from 31 hospitals that participated in patient...
Read MoreForty-three minutes—that’s the median length of time a hospitalized elderly patient spends standing or walking daily, reports a New York Times story. Not only that, the paper from which the 43 minutes number came also noted that...
Read MoreToday I received another dues notice from the American Medical Association (AMA). For a mere $420.00 per year, I can become a member. Over 10 years ago, I dropped out of the AMA because it seemed to be run by a bunch of old guys...
Read MoreYou may have missed this when it first appeared. Experts from Harvard and the University of Southern California say assumptions made by some analysts that defensive medicine is not an important facet of the high cost of...
Read MoreA paper entitled “An increase in the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees is linked to lower rates of postsurgery mortality” appeared in Health Affairs in March and generated quite a lot of buzz on the...
Read MoreIt’s crunch time for radiologists. The New York Times reported that an osteopathic radiology residency in the Bronx was abruptly terminated (the decision was later reversed for this year), casting its 12 residents adrift....
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In a news article about some sanctions that the state of California imposed on certain hospitals...
Read MoreI once blogged that in my next life, I wanted to be reincarnated as a weatherman. You get to make predictions and have no accountability when they are wrong (except for one Washington, DC weatherman who recently was given a...
Read MoreA medical student who thinks he wants a career in academic surgery asks, “You were deep into academic medicine and walked away from chairman, program director, etc. Why?” [Background: For over 23 years, I was a full-time...
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