Doctors put their patients at grave risk by failing to stay current with professional best practices, eliminating outdated and ineffective therapies and approaches and instead learning and adapting better ways of care, notably treatments to help deal with the opioid crisis. Vulnerable children can pay an unacceptable price, for example, for pediatricians’ unwillingness to “unlearn”….
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Doctors and hospitals tussle over surgery for less-invasive heart valve repair
When big hospitals and their doctors jostle with competitors in smaller and medium-sized facilities over who gets to perform an important and booming kind of surgery, it’s not a pretty sight — nor might it be obvious with which institutions patients ought to side. Phil Galewitz of the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service does….
Continue ReadingIn health care, nursing homes not alone in confronting staffing problems
It’s unlikely to surprise anyone who has visited friends or loved ones at a nursing home that such facilities too often are woefully staffed. But why have federal regulators allowed themselves to be gulled about nursing home personnel levels, and how will not just these care-giving sites but also others, notably hospitals, deal with the….
Continue ReadingDoctors must give patients more help with medical uncertainty and complexity
Although Americans may love to wager on ponies, lotteries, and even church bingo games, they’re getting restive and confused about playing the odds with their health — and doctors need to step up their game a lot to help patients better cope with medical uncertainties. Dhruv Khullar, a physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a researcher at….
Continue ReadingSafety and injury prevention should be part of our new year exercise plans
Millions of Americans may be hitting the gym as part of their new year resolve to get fitter. They also need to exercise caution and common sense to avoid injuries that could leave them in worse shape. As the Washington Post reported, the 2018 health club crush will result in “hundreds of thousands of [exercisers]….
Continue ReadingWhy are doctors and hospitals so quick to turn to heart stents and robotic devices?
Hundreds of thousands of times each year, doctors install stents (tiny wire cages) in blocked heart arteries, not only to provide better blood flow to the body’s most important muscle but also ostensibly to provide pain relief to patients. Surgeons also perform tens of thousands of different, minimally invasive procedures with the help of elaborate….
Continue ReadingNew disclosures deepen scandal over DC hospital’s risky obstetrics care
Doctors and hospitals across the country push the frontiers of medical science every day, finding new ways to improve health care and to change and save lives. But at the same time, some of medicine’s basics—like delivering babies safely and protecting mothers’ well being—also keep getting botched, especially for poor and black women. It’s a….
Continue ReadingFitness fans: Don’t spin your way into dehydration or muscle damage
Although many sports enthusiasts relish the summer as a peak time to train hard to get especially fit, wise athletes for safety’s sake may wish to build their way up to exhausting workouts, and to ensure they’re staying hydrated in healthful ways, while also recognizing that endurance competitions may alter their bodies in ways that….
Continue ReadingAnesthesia residents offer eye-opening insights on drowsy MD perils
Some of the very medical specialists who are supposed to put patients to sleep experience big problems themselves staying awake, with more than half of anesthetic trainees reporting in a new national survey in Britain that they had crashed their cars or nearly done so while headed home after long night shifts. American doctors’ social….
Continue ReadingIf patient safety matters, why are residents returning to long, sleepless shifts?
Must doctors be absolutely impervious to common sense improvements in the way they train their own? Their bullheadedness has reemerged with the revisited decision by a major academic credentialing group to allow medical residents yet again to work 24-hour shifts. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education clearly was on the defensive when it issued….
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