Foreign medical graduates are not the primary care solution
With immigration reform under hot debate, it’s important to remember that all of us except the Native Americans are foreigners. It’s what has made our culture so diverse. People from foreign countries ideally bring the best of their cultures to the US and enrich us all with the diversity of life. This advantage lessens considerably when those visitors want to enter fields in which understanding of endemic American culture is critical. So it can be with foreign medical graduates (FMGs).
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide....
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 23, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
A Mission to One of the Most Devastated Places in the World
By Josh Skaggs, MD
I went on a medical mission to East Africa’s South Sudan this past January and February. The country is one of the most undeveloped, isolated, and devastated places in the world, and it was an amazing experience even though being there was incredibly tough.
South Sudan and Sudan used to be under the control of Egypt, and were overseen by Great Britain. Great Britain withdrew from Sudan, its former colony, in 1956. Sudan had two regions at that time, the Arab north and the tribal south. War broke out after the northern Sudanese government began killing all non-Arabs in the south who would not “c...
Source: Going Global - July 15, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
A Mission to One of the Most Devastated Places in the World
By Josh Skaggs, MD
I went on a medical mission to East Africa’s South Sudan this past January and February. The country is one of the most undeveloped, isolated, and devastated places in the world, and it was an amazing experience even though being there was incredibly tough.
South Sudan and Sudan used to be under the control of Egypt, and were overseen by Great Britain. Great Britain withdrew from Sudan, its former colony, in 1956. Sudan had two regions at that time, the Arab north and the tribal south. War broke out after the northern Sudanese government began killing all non-Arabs in the south who would not ...
Source: Going Global - July 15, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Screening inpatients for MRSA—case closed.
It isn't often that you see a headline like this in the medical world. But such are the conclusions reached by Michael B. Edmond, M.D., M.P.H., and Richard P. Wenzel, M.D.in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. The editorial commented on the results of an extensive study by Susan S. Huang et al published by NEJM, entitled, "Targeted versus Universal Decolonization to Prevent ICU Infection."This is a big deal. For a number of years, people have been arguing over the issue of whether screening patients for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, with subsequent isolation, would be b...
Source: Running a hospital - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Top medicine articles for April-May 2013
Here are my suggestions for some of the top articles in medicine for April-May 2013:
Antibiotics for COPD exacerbations: Further Evidence of Benefit http://buff.ly/WOANHG
Diet does not work: substituting dietary linoleic acid in place of saturated fats increased the rates of death - BMJ http://buff.ly/WOAZH5
The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930–1953 (illustrated review) http://1.usa.gov/VcuA7W via @Skepticscalpel
Nearsighted kids may get worse in winter http://trib.in/VcvmC1 -- Myopia progression seem to decrease in periods with longer days and to increase in periods with shorter days. Children should ...
Source: Clinical Cases and Images - Blog - May 22, 2013 Category: Professors and Educators Tags: Health News of the Day Source Type: blogs
Stopping the EPA from Regulating Puddles
Ilya Shapiro
Some of the biggest Environmental Protection Agency abuses of property rights (see last term’s Sackett case and this term’s Koontz case) stem from expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act. The EPA imposes huge costs on people who want to do anything on their property, claiming the agency has the authority to regulate “wetlands.” The agency is only supposed to have authority to regulate discharges to “navigable” waters, but the jurisprudence here is so confused that it’s become an area ripe for federal overreach. This week a group of Republican senators (Rand Paul, Mike L...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 10, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ilya Shapiro Source Type: blogs
Guest post: Kevin Carpenter on his new microbial photo exhibit at the Exploratorium in SF #SoCool
Special guest post from Kevin Carpenter who has microbe photos featured at the Exploratorium.
One of my colleagues who does research on the microbes that live in the hindguts of lower termites once remarked that interesting organisms can be found in the most unusual of places. And the lower termite hindgut, by almost anyone’s estimation, is certainly an unusual place. It is also a fascinating place for anyone interested in biology, ecology, evolution, biochemistry, or beautiful natural forms and patterns.
Since my undergraduate days in the early 90s, I have had a deep interest in the tree of life, especially eukaryote...
Source: The Tree of Life - April 24, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Comment Replies…
Tee and Hubby said... Oh my goodness, that look delicious and I'm starving! Forget the cubed steak, just give me more of that mac and cheese. I love beets as well.Any damage from the storms yesterday? None this time, but back in March we had hail larger than golf balls, we are getting a new roof. Andrew replies… Tee, I wish you and Hubby could come and eat with us some Friday. Mac and cheese is one of Helen’s specialties. We didn’t have any damage here. We did get some crazy pea sized hail that made one hell of a racket on my roof, car, and awnings. glittermom said... what is this southern sticky rice yo...
Source: The 4th Avenue Blues - April 12, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: Andrew Quixote Source Type: blogs
Serious power failure threatens the entire field of neuroscience
Psychology has had a torrid time of late, with fraud scandals and question marks about the replicability of many of the discipline's key findings. Today it is joined in the dock by its more biologically oriented sibling: Neuroscience. A team led by Katherine Button at the School of Experimental Psychology in Bristol, and including psychologist Brian Nosek, founder of the new Center for Open Science, make the case in a new paper that the majority of neuroscience studies involve woefully small sample sizes, rendering their results highly unreliable. "Low statistical power is an endemic problem in neuroscience,...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 10, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christian Jarrett Source Type: blogs
Answer to Case 251
Answer: fly larva; clinical presentation is consistent with myiasisMany commented that identification becomes more challenging when arthropods are sectioned and stained since the external features are obscured or lost. However, there are still features that allow us to positively identify this as a fly larva such as the overall size and shape, mandibles, and yellow cuticular spines:Unfortunately, definitive identification to the genus or species level is not possible without macroscopic examination of the larva. Therefore, we instead must rely on the clinical history, which would suggest that this larva is like...
Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites - March 25, 2013 Category: Pathologists Source Type: blogs
Answer to Case 250
Answer: Babesiosis, due to a species other than B. microtiThank you all for the comments! Most of you realized that there was something special about this case given the classic morphologic features of babesiosis (with many tetrads/maltese cross forms), supportive clinical history, and yet repeatedly negative PCR tests for B. microti. (The fact that I chose this as the 250th case probably also let you know that there was something unusual about it!) As some of you mentioned, the blood film results are diagnostic for babesiosis, regardless of the PCR results, and therefore further work-up i...
Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites - March 16, 2013 Category: Pathologists Source Type: blogs
Iron Deficiency in the Elderly, the Silent Killer
Once more our laxidasical healthcare system has struck my family. My favorite aunt, well into her 80's but living independently with her husband and enjoying life, suddenly goes into congestive heart failure. With encouragement from me, she agrees to go to the emergency, gets the urgent intervention to reverse the failure, and is referred to a cardiologist. Keep in mind she had just been to a cardiologist six weeks before and was told everything was fine----but that is another story. During her stay in the emergency it was found that her blood was down several pints and she was gi...
Source: What's Wrong with Healthcare? - February 25, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Source Type: blogs
Is there a cure for corporate crime in the drug industry? - BMJ
Editorial
Effective enforcement of regulations requires more resources and determination to impose robust sanctions
Nearly 30 years ago, Braithwaite’s Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry showed that unethical and corrupt behaviour was endemic in the sector. Sadly, there is growing evidence that little has changed. Recent research suggests that violation of the law continues to be widespread. Most new medicines offer little or no therapeutic advantage over existing products, so promotion plays a huge role in achieving market share. In a crowded and competitive marketplace the temptation for companies to resort to mislea...
Source: PharmaGossip - February 8, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Too many portable chest Xrays
Talk with any radiologist about portable chest xray interpretation versus the standard PA and Lateral chest films. The portable film often provides a confusing picture. The reasons are numerous and I will leave them to others to enumerate.
We all know the flaws of portable films, yet I never get admissions with PA and lateral films, rather the ED always does portables. I talked with a radiologist who told me that the price of the films is equal.
So, dear emergency physicians, is there something wrong with our emergency department or is this an endemic problem. Why not get proper films? (Source: DB's Medical Rants)
Source: DB's Medical Rants - January 21, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
The Future Of The Polio Eradication Campaign
The week of December 17 was a grim one for the polio eradication effort in Pakistan. Seven Pakistani women health workers and two Pakistani men, all working to ensure the success of the polio campaign, were killed, presumably by members of the Pakistani Taliban. This is a tragedy, for the families of those killed, for the children who will go unvaccinated after the government’s suspension of the vaccine campaign, and for the effort to eradicate polio worldwide. Pakistan is one of only three countries remaining with endemic wild polio virus (the others are Afghanistan and Nigeria). It also had turned a corner in its ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - January 11, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Judith Kaufmann Tags: All Categories Global Health Public Health Source Type: blogs
