blog.bioethics.net
a Nature Top 50 science blog from The American Journal of Bioethics
Entries from blog.bioethics.net tagged with 'doctors'
Doc Goes "Up in Smoke" for Selling and Partaking in Medical Marijuana with "Patients"
Imagine, if you can, walking into your doctor's office, jumping up onto the paper lined table and the following dialogue occuring: DOCTOR: "[Coughing] Whew. That's Kush stuff. That's OG Kush. Whew, that's some great potent herb. It's just good to be in California. Yeah. We could be in Oklahoma." The... (read the rest)
Michael Jackson's "Unintended, but Foreseen" Death
On OUP's Medical Monday blog, Robert Veatch talks about the decision made by Michael Jackson's physician to offer him what was arguably a potentially lethal dose of the anesthetic, propofol, and the trade-off that he believes that Mr. Jackson and Dr. Murray made to give him some much needed rest.... (read the rest)
Doctors Not Making the Big Bucks Say Bye-Bye to Medicine
The practice of medicine has just become too tough for many physicians. Too many long days, too many lawsuits, too much paperwork, all for too few zeros after the dollar sign. So with increasing frequency doctors are hanging up the white coat and stethoscope and saying "Adios!" to the clinic... (read the rest)
Your Out! Auf Wiedersehen to the Doctor's White Coat
They never were fashion-forward, but the AMA had a much better reason to vote out the traditional doctor's white coat this week. The long sleeves have been proven to spread infection when brushing across sick patients for hours at a time. The key: getting hospitals and notoriously stubborn doctors stuck... (read the rest)
Sham Doctor Performed Real Surgeries
He must look old for his age. Otherwise it's almost inexplicable how a 22-year-old Oregon man was able to convince multiple patients that he was a physician, when he has no medical training. The fake physician went so far as to dispense medications and even to perform minor surgeries on... (read the rest)
Toto, We're Not in Kansas Anymore, or Texas, Or Seattle Grace Hospital, For That Matter
For as much as it might seem okay for as much as it happens in prime time TV medical dramas or daytime soap operas, there doesn't seem to be a medical board out there or the American Medical Association, for that matter, that thinks it's okay for doctors to have... (read the rest)
All in the Family
What to do when you are the doctor, NP or other kind of health care provider and your relative comes to you and asks for a diagnosis, prescription or other kinds of care? Should you treat them or turn them away? Last week, American Medical News grappled with this thorny... (read the rest)
When You Can't Get a PDR, Grab an iPhone!
One in ten doctors recommends...an iPhone! Yes, you heard that right. One in ten doctors agrees that the iPhone is a good health tool. For what? The PDR. Recommending drugs. Or at least preventing drug interactions. Or both. Read it here from the WSJ: "When Apple first started promoting applications... (read the rest)
The Hospital That Pays Together Stays Together
What do you do when your hospital is in budget trouble and layoffs are expected? Well, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the department heads open their wallets and decide to pony up some of their own hard earned money to keep their departments afloat. According to the Wall Street... (read the rest)
What Are Doctors Asking Teen Patients About?
Should parents be listening in when doctors ask their teenage sons and daughters medical questions? At what age are "tweens" and older teens entitled to some medical privacy? A recent Associated Press story, republished in the Chicago Tribune, asked precisely these questions. The article goes on to suggest that many... (read the rest)
Who's Scared of A Little Online Feedback? Doctors.
Professors have a website for it, so do plumbers. So why are physicians all up in arms over websites that would allow online ratings and feedback of patient experiences? According to USA Today, "Consumers and patients are hungry for good information" about doctors, but Internet reviews provide just the opposite,... (read the rest)
Chinese Doctors: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
The Chinese government is cracking down on smoking--among one of its most heavily using populations: physicians. Yes, according to Reuters, more than 50% of China's male MDs smoke cigarettes. Now the government is asking them to set an example for their patients by kicking the habit. While this is only... (read the rest)
Build It and They Will Come....Not To Use It
According to the L.A. Times Booster Shots blog, doctors who use electronic drug-prescribing systems and receive warnings about potentially fatal drug interactions they are prescribing for patients simply ignore them. "Darn beeping machine. How annoying. Worse than pagers these things!" According to a study published in the Archives of Internal... (read the rest)
My Doctor's Always on Call--Via Mobile
A company called BPL Mobile has launched a new service called, "Doctors on Call", a 9 am to 9 PM service that will allow patients to speak to remote doctor about their medical conditions. This Bangalore-based service is said to diagnose patients into three, highly specific, categories: "Acute", "Chronic" and... (read the rest)
Doctor, Where Did Your White Coat Go?
Doctors in Scotland have shed their white coats in the name of health and safety, says the NHS. To stop the spread of infections, they are telling their doctors to take off those iconic duds in favor of new less-infectious uniforms with shorter sleeves (that allow for hands to be... (read the rest)
Docs Tired of Paper Work? I Have a Solution
Today in one of my favorite blogs, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, Jacob Goldstein comments on the fact that doctors, drowning in paperwork, have less and less time to heal. The solution, of course, which health economists, health policy analysts, and bioethicists have been clamoring for for years, is... (read the rest)
Is There Anyone Who We Won't Let Be A Physician?
No one is perfect--but a physician charged for the tenth time for sex related allegations is still seeing patients in Canada. How this is possible completely eludes me. Were the previous nine allegations all found to be completely unsubstantiated? Is this poor fellow being singled out? I don't think so.... (read the rest)
A Concierge Isn't Just at A Hotel Anymore...
The Sunday Baltimore Sun featured a story about "concierge" medicine and a Maryland trend of primary care docs charging premium membership fees on the order of $4000 or more for patients to be part of their practice. The reason? One doc was quoted in the article: "Primary-care doctors are seeing... (read the rest)
Nurse, Give This Patient a Placebo.
A new study published in British Medical Journal has shown that almost half of internists have prescribed drugs that were expected to have nothing more than placebo effect. As reported by Bloomberg, these useless prescriptions were handed out as often as 2 or 3 times per month. Why would docs... (read the rest)
Let's Get Physical
I agree with The Wall Street Journal Health Blog and NEJM's Brian Rank, that executive physicals are, as they are currently practiced little more than a sham. To be more specific, as Rank argues, executive physicals are three things: inefficacious, too costly, and inequitable. More akin to going to a... (read the rest)
Please Hold Still. Your HMO Will Only Pay For a 5 Minute Massage
It turns out that there actually is something called "healing touch". Researchers at Brigham Young University have found that a kind touch between persons reduces stress and lowers blood pressure, says USA Today. These findings were particularly true for a 30-minute massage in men for whom it caused the release... (read the rest)
Doctors Flee from Epidemic
In the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, Malm et al. address the question of whether physicians have a duty to treat during a public health emergency or whether the duty to heal ends where the epidemic beings. However, if people began to have the RFID tags implanted... (read the rest)
Getting Off Easy
According to a study published in the journal Pain Medicine as reported in the NYT, approximately 0.1 percent of pain physicians ever face punishment or sanction for prescribing narcotics. To boot, just 3% of these actually specialized in pain control. What to conclude from this? According to Myra Christopher, president... (read the rest)
Jeremy, You Are Way Way Way too Young for This!
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has created the Jeremy Sugarman Award to honor individuals who show the potential for excellence in bioethics research. The award is named for Jeremy Sugarman, MD MPH, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics' Deputy Director for Medicine and Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Bioethics... (read the rest)
Beware: Your Doctor May Be a Blogger...
A recent report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, as reported on US News and World Report, found that more than half of medical blogs allowed the physicans themselves to be identified and even some patients could identify themselves from the blog entries. Far be it from us to... (read the rest)
No to Pens and Yes to Pizza
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Board of Directors have adopted a new code of ethics on interactions with healthcare professionals (bioethics.net News, July 12, 2008). This change in the code would further restrict pharmaceutical reps and other industry professionals in regard to their interactions with doctors, nurses,... (read the rest)
Accepting placebos
Over at the Neuroethics and Law Blog, Adam Kolber argues that we should embrace the use of placebos: Should a doctor stop prescribing antidepressants to a particular patient when the doctor believes that antidepressants will be no better for the patient than placebos? After recent changes in the American Medical... (read the rest)
The joints where industry and orthopedists meet
Scott Haig, an orthopedist, writing in Time about the conflicts of interest that surfaced at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons: The DOJ's slap was felt acutely by everyone at the convention. No more free dinners, shoulder bags, flashlights and pens. Way fewer models in... (read the rest)
One of medical school's lessons: how to be less empathic
A study published this month in Academic Medicine looked how medical school affects levels of "vicarious empathy" in students, or as the paper is titled, "Is There Hardening of the Heart During Medical School?" The short answer: it looks like it. The authors report that students' vicarious empathy declines significantly... (read the rest)
Should you "protect" a patient from his own convictions?
This week's JAMA includes an interesting article by Dr. Bruce Campbell, a surgeon in Milwaukee. He writes about his apprehension in removing a tumor from a Jehovah's Witness. The procedure itself was relatively ordinary, but it carried the real risk of bleeding -- and the patient had, in accordance with... (read the rest)
Criminalizing the brain drain
By Stuart Rennie There are many numbers around to express the inequalities in health care between developed and developing nations. In Malawi, there is one physician for about 50,000 persons; compare with Great Britain, where it is considered shocking when there are districts with only one doctor per 3500. In... (read the rest)
Doctors and the death penalty
What role, if any, should doctors have in executions? That's the focus of an editorial in this week's NEJM by Gregory D. Curfman, Stephen Morrissey and Jeffrey M. Drazen that looks ahead to a decision in the Supreme Court case Baze v. Rees. They contend that lethal injection has led... (read the rest)
Out with them, out with them all!
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that a health care group got an early jump on Spring cleaning: Administrators at SMDC Health System saw them as virulent, insidious and cause for an all-out eradication campaign in its four hospitals and 17 clinics throughout northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Germs? No, pens and... (read the rest)
AJOB article at center of focus on hospital ethics consultation
American Medical News, an AMA publication, recently took a look at the state of ethics consult services in hospitals -- and it found a lot of unease. Doctors are hesitant to call for ethics consults. Ethics consultants often lack the training and resources to effectively address situations. And among bioethicists,... (read the rest)
Surgery is not photojournalism
To go in for surgery is to become vulnerable. We're put under anesthesia and, in some cases, literally opened up for others to see. But we trust that the professionals involved have our best interests at heart and whatever might be revealed about us will be kept confidential. Alas, sometimes... (read the rest)
To hug, or not to hug
When -- if ever -- should a doctor hug her patients? Michael Wilkes, who's an M.D., takes up the topic in a recent column for the Sacramento Bee: When we teach students about antibiotics or surgical procedures, our first step is to look at the indications – when is it... (read the rest)
Doctors who refuse care because of moral objections
The moral objections of pharmacists have gotten a lot of attention over the last few years, but according to a recent CNN report moral objection is increasingly an issue in doctors' offices. From a transcript of the segment: RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In June, this 24- year-old from Texas... (read the rest)
One more time -- should docs take freebies from drug companies?
By James Fossett In an article in the most recent New England Journal of Medicine, Eric Campbell has some new data on an old question -- how many doctors take things from drug companies and what effects does taking things have on prescribing patterns? (free access). Campbell reports these connections... (read the rest)
Another angle on the lethal injection question
Last week we posted about the current legal proceedings over the constitutionality of lethal injection. On Sunday the LA Times reported on a related situation in North Carolina, where the state medical board in a legal fight over whether it has the authority to bar doctors from taking part in... (read the rest)
OK, who hasn't taken money from drug companies?
Via Jim Fossett comes word of a paper in the October 17 JAMA reporting that 60 percent of respondents to a survey of medical school department chairs indicated they had some form of personal relationship with industry -- either as a consultant, a member of a scientific advisory board, a... (read the rest)
Networking with Pfizer
Online social networking sites are all the rage these days, so it was only a matter of time before there was one for doctors -- and that's what Sermo is aiming to be. The site decribes itself thusly: Here, physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly... (read the rest)
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