Browsing the archives for the patient experience category
Why our medical malpractice system is superior to not having one. One of the topics I went to China to discuss was our medical school’s approach to teaching medical ethics. At Wuhan University they have a first-year course, but I was told by both the school administrators and some of the students that the material is dry and not seen of immediate importance, [...]
Why Sparky Anderson’s death occurred so soon after he went to hospice. Hall of Fame baseball manager Sparky Anderson’s death was announced less than 24 hours after a previous news item revealed that his family had moved him to hospice. Baseball fans across the U.S. are saddened by the loss of the first manager to [...]
It was a straightforward phone message (names changed): Hey Dr. S., this is Bobbie Jones, April Dixon’s granddaughter. I was calling to inform you that April Dixon passed away today at City Hospital. They said she was bleeding in her stomach or something; I’m not quite what sure what happened but she got real sick. But she’s [...]
Over the summer, a couple of news stories stood out to me as examples of lemons and lemonade: First, the prix du citron: Tony Hayward of BP, after his company’s oil rig ‘malfunctioned’ and poured millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. He had a few choice doozies. You probably remember: The Gulf of [...]
Every once in awhile amidst the weekly deluge of medical articles comes a show-stopper that has the potential to change the way we practice. Rarer yet is the article that not only changes how we practice, but calls into question why we do what we do. This recent article from the New England Journal of Medicine [...]