Tags: doctors
Blog Posts (56)
May 13, 2012
Tweeting Live Medical Procedures
Using Twitter to broadcast a live surgical procedure: educational or ethically dubious? There are obvious concerns with the practice such as the invasion of privacy or potential for error/adverse events due to the broadcast.…
Apr 19, 2012
Cancer Patients Are Mum About Care Problems
A study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reports via Reuters Health today that cancer patients rarely tell anyone about the problems with the care they receive.…
Apr 16, 2012
Feeding Tubes for Brides?
Sometimes doctors engage in questionable practices for the “good of the patient.” Think plastic surgeons who enhance breasts to any size to help their patients feel better about their body image.…
Apr 03, 2012
Are Criminal Background Checks for Doctors Justified?
It is hard to determine which is more concerning: the fact that state medical boards are now doing background checks on their physicians or that prior experience suggests that they have to in order to protect public safety.…
Oct 03, 2011
Doth My Doctor Protest Too Much?
Is there a limit to how far physicians can go in their social or political activism? Ford Vox, writing in The Atlantic, suggests that perhaps there is.…
Jun 24, 2011
Patients Gifting to Providers: Ethical or Suspect?
Art Caplan asks this very question in his MSNBC column this week. When a wealthy recluse died at the age of 104, to whom did she leave her fortune?…
Jun 14, 2011
Smile! You are on Candid Camera!
That phrase may be the last word that some patients hear from their physician as they go under the knife, if a Massachusetts law passes.…
Feb 19, 2011
Docs Who Give Bad Tweet: Unprofessional or Just Uneducated?
Social networking among physicians is raising concerns for a variety of obvious reasons–it challenges our standard ways of thinking about the physician-patient relationship which for the most part has been confined to the exam room.…
Aug 12, 2010
Slicin' and Dicin' Doesn't Work for BDD Sufferers
As shocking as this might sound, those who suffer from body dismorphic disorder (BDD) don’t feel better or improve on any indicators after having plastic surgery according to a recent study in the Annals of Plastic Surgery.…
Jul 21, 2010
A Code of Silence
We all know that there is honor among thieves, but apparently a similar code exists among physicians, both good and bad.…
News (34)
May 15, 2012
GPs urged to help patients plan their end-of-life care (GP Online)
GPs have been urged to do more to ensure patients’ end-of-life wishes are respected, after a poll found more than a third had never initiated talks with patients about end-of-life care. The survey of 1,000 GPs by pollsters ComRes on behalf of the Dying Matters Coalition found that female GPs and more recently qualified GPs were more likely to talk to patients about end-of-life care.
May 14, 2012
How Close Is Too Close? (Huffington Post)
As reported by the Medill News Service and subsequently covered in the Chicago Sun-Times, these scenarios are raising questions from both doctors and their patients about what is and isn’t acceptable in the doctor’s office. TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice regularly feature doctors forming friendships and even intimate relationships with the people they’re caring for. Is this what we’re supposed to expect from a visit to the doctor? Has it become the norm?
May 06, 2012
Patients' Complex Moral Issues - Doctors Need Mediators (Medical News Today)
According to a study in The American Journal of Bioethics, physicians and patients need assistance in order to deal with complex moral issues. Physicians often have the tendency to label their patients as ‘difficult’ when things become difficult, however, according to the author of the new study it actually the system that is at fault and not the patients.
May 05, 2012
Patients' Complex Moral Issues - Doctors Need Mediators (Medical News Today)
According to a study in The American Journal of Bioethics, physicians and patients need assistance in order to deal with complex moral issues.
May 04, 2012
Can a Hospital Say, "Only Thin Doctors Can Work Here"? (Medscape)
To put it bluntly, should hospitals hire employees who are overweight? A hospital in Texas, Citizens Medical Center, has said that it is not going to hire anybody — doctors, health staff, nurses — who is overweight. For them, that means a body mass index of over 35 kg/m2; or in other words, for a 5’10″ man, if you weigh more than about 250 lb, you wouldn’t get hired at this particular Texas facility.
Apr 30, 2012
Patients want to use social media tools to manage health care (American Medical News)
Some patients have moved beyond wanting social media content they can “follow” or “like.” They want social media to be something that helps them coordinate care and navigate the health care system, and they think physicians are the best people to deliver it.
Apr 30, 2012
In UK survey, doctors support denying treatment to smokers, the obese (MSNBC)
A majority of doctors in a United Kingdom survey supported measures to deny non-emergency medical services to smokers and the obese, The Observer newspaper reported Sunday. Although the survey by the networking website doctors.net.uk was a self-selecting poll, the site’s chief executive called the response “a tectonic shift” for the profession. The results feed into a British debate about “lifestyle rationing” by the National Health Service, the Observer reported.
Apr 30, 2012
Does Medicine Discourage Gay Doctors? (New York Times)
During my surgical training, whenever the conversation turned to relationships, one of my colleagues would always joke about his inability to get a date, then abruptly change the subject. I thought he might be gay but never asked him outright, because it didn’t seem important. But one morning, while we working at the nurses’ station with several of the other doctors-in-training, I realized it was important, because at the hospital, he really couldn’t be himself.
Apr 26, 2012
Physicians shouldn’t let disputes with vaccine-averse parents impede a child’s broader medical care. (The Star)
Vaccinating children against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and other infectious diseases saves countless lives. It is one of the great health advances of the last 100 years. Most parents recognize that, and get their kids vaccinated. But some don’t, mostly out of mistrust for conventional medicine, unfounded fear of adverse side-effects or a misplaced faith in unproven “alternative” nostrums. Dr. Hirotaka Yamashiro, a leading Ontario pediatrician, estimates that one in every 25 or 30 parents balks at routine immunization. That is a worrisome thought. Such parents put their kids, and the wider community, at risk.
Apr 25, 2012
Drugs firm takes cost conscious doctors to court (The Independent)
Independent experts have condemned the Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis for trying to force the NHS to buy an expensive drug to treat patients suffering from a degenerative eye disease, rather than using a cheaper, unlicensed alternative. Novartis is taking four NHS areas in the south of England to a judicial review because they have allowed doctors to prescribe the anti-cancer drug Avastin to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration.