Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017 -- photos and all links removed as many no longer active. and it was easier than checking each one.

Dr Charles, The Examining Room of Doctor Charles, is the host for this week’s Grand Rounds.    Check out his post:  Caring for the Patient Who Is a Zombie.  You can read this week’s edition here.

Welcome to Grand Rounds, a weekly collection of excellent writings submitted by medical bloggers.  The theme for this week is minimalism – I’m going to restrain myself and let the authors speak for themselves:……….

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Dr Wes has done a review of a film I wish all of us could see:  The Vanishing Oath: A Review

…..As background, the film is a three-year project born in 2007 just before the great US health care reform debate began. Over 200 hours of interviews were conducted explore a simple question: why Dr. Flesher had grown to hate medicine.

It would have been easy for Dr. Flesher and Ms. Pardo to make his story nothing but a rant, but instead, we find that their story is an honest attempt to understand how someone so enthusiastic at the start of their training could become so quickly discontented with the realities of emergency room care and our bloated health care delivery system…….

Addendum: The film will be premiered in Chicago on 25 May 2010. Seating is limited.

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KevinMD’s post, False patient contact information worsens emergency care, was eye-opening to me.  I did not realize this was such a significant and growing issue.

In a study from the Journal of Emergency Medicine, out of of 1,136 patients, “only only 42 percent could be successfully contacted using the numbers provided [and] nearly 28 percent of the patients gave wrong or disconnected numbers.”

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Birth control bills turned 50.  Check out this NY Times article by  Gardiner Harris:   It Started More Than One Revolution  (photo credit)

The birth control pill has been called the most important scientific advance of the 20th century, and no wonder. Fifty years after its approval by the Food and Drug Administration, it is still one of the leading methods of contraception, in the United States and around the world………

One last bit of lore about the pill: no one is even sure when to celebrate its birthday. Ten years ago, the agency honored the occasion on June 23, the date that the F.D.A. gave formal approval for Searle to market the product. This year, the agency is celebrating on May 9, which coincides with the period 50 years ago when it announced its intention to approve the pill when a few technical details were ironed out. That this happens to be Mother’s Day this year may have played a role in the decision…..

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In celebration of  the pill’s birthday, OB Cookie made Contraceptive Confections.  The post includes directions.  (photo credit)

Disclaimer: This cake contains no contraceptive properties and does not prevent pregnancy

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I want to visit this museum featured in Sterile Eye’s recent post:  The Medical Museion (photo credit)

The illustration above shows a woman having the back of her neck pierced with a large needle. And what was this supposed to cure? The common cold, which was believed to be caused by too much phlegm around the brain. So naturally, the cure would be to drain phlegm, for example through a hole in the neck. The patient usually recovered, as you do from a cold, which the doctor no doubt attributed to this excellent treatment…

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May 4, 2010 marked the first installment of Big Think's newest video interview series, Moments of Genius, sponsored by Intel.

This first set of video interviews features Martin Cooper, inventor of the cell phone; David Ho, the AIDS researcher famous for pioneering combination therapy in treating HIV-infected patients; and Arlie Petters, a mathematical physicist at Duke who is out to prove the existence of a fifth dimension.

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Dr Anonymous’ BTR show guest this week will be medical student and video blogger, Bryan McColgan.   The show begins at 9 pm ET.

Upcoming shows (9pm ET)

5/20: Larry Bauer from the Family Medicine Education Consortium