Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Pinpointing the transition from human to doctor
"When they embark on the journey to become physicians, most students are enthusiastic, filled with idealism and a genuine intention to serve those in need of help," says a new study in Academic Medicine. What happens to them, you wonder? The study authors did too, so they set out to analyze the loss of empathy in a group of medical students.
Turns out empathy takes a big hit during the third year of medical school, when the students start really interacting with patients. And no, it's not just because real patients are more obnoxious and difficult than hypotheticals. Researchers attribute the problem to a number of factors, including a lack of role models, too much to learn, lack of sleep, technology and a focus on the science of medicine. The article suggests several methods for teaching empathy to med students (including keeping them away from the really obnoxious patients) and calls on medical educators to take action.
"Most of us in medical education advocate empathy, but the effect of simply advocating empathy without embracing it and living with it, and without implementing targeted programs to enhance it, is analogous to singing a lovely song only in one's own mind without others ever enjoying it!"
Labels: medical education
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
6:00 PM
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Monday, August 24, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
Remember when your Scout leader told you to hug a tree if you got lost in the woods? Turns out they were right, according to a new study.
Researchers had subjects walk in the woods, then the Sahara, and finally through a field blindfolded. What happened? Not so surprisingly, without the sun or some other object to guide themselves by, the people got lost and wandered around in circles. Especially the poor blindfolded ones. "Not only did they walk in circles, some of the circles were as small as about 66 feet, similar in size to a basketball court," sniffs the HealthDay article about the study.
We're looking forward to the follow-up, in which Smokey the Bear finally provides the evidence that only you can prevent forest fires.
Labels: medical news of the obvious
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
9:00 AM
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
Someone needs to buy these researchers a drink. Because it's pretty clear they've never been to a bar before.
Their study (which was oh-so-appropriately published in Human Nature) found that men are more likely than women to agree to casual sex. Greater percentages of men said they would go out, go to an apartment, and go to bed with members of the opposite sex whether they were "slightly unattractive," "moderately attractive" or "exceptionally attractive." (Don't worry, the scientists weren't categorizing actual women that way; it was all hypothetical.) Women, on the other hand, reserved their one-night stands for the exceptionally attractive guys.
In an addendum that will only be shocking to anyone who has never walked down the street in Europe, Italian men were most likely to accept sex with a stranger, followed by American guys and then Germans.
Labels: medical news of the obvious
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
8:00 AM
0 Comments
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Rx: Chill out and eat chocolate.
Hospitalists may someday prescribe chocolate bars and tickle therapy in their discharge orders to patients with heart problems, if the results of two studies are any indication.
In one, patients who were hospitalized for MI between 1992-1994 were less likely to die of heart disease over the next eight years if they ate chocolate at least twice a week vs. never eating chocolate, the study of middle-aged Swedes found. Check out these hazard ratios that compare never eating chocolate with:
--Eating chocolate less than once per month: 0.73 (95% confidence interval, 0.41-1.31)
--Eating chocolate up to once per week: 0.56 (CI, 0.32-0.99)
--Eating chocolate twice or more per week: 0.34 (CI, 0.17-0.70)
The poor souls who favor candy over chocolate are out of luck, however: consumption of other kinds of sweets had no effect on cardiac mortality, the researchers found.
A second study from the Women's Health Initiative found that women who were cynical and hostile toward others had higher rates of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and mortality over 8 years than less cynical and/or hostile women. Likewise, optimistic women had lower rates of CHD and death than pessimists.
Together, these studies beg the question: Might we someday prescribe hugs, feel-good movies and daily Dove bars along with the statins? Seems like it couldn't hurt...
Labels: cardiology
posted by Jessica Berthold at
4:01 PM
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Got MRSA?
A new study of U.S. data shows that in the five years that elapsed between the beginning of 2000 through the end of 2004, the number of people hospitalized
for community-acquired MRSA infections rose by 29%. Possible explanations include greater resistance to antibiotics prescribed for outpatients, and more physician awareness of the
seriousness of the infections--which leads them to recommend hospitalization, the authors said. The article is in the September Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
Speaking of infections, the Sept. EID journal also contains a fascinating little piece on the dangers of backyard raccoon "latrines". Less than a teaspoon of raccoon poo can contain tens of thousands of parasite eggs which can attack the brain and eyes, leading to death or neurologic disability, the article says. It advises parents to keep an eye on where their children play, and drive those nasty raccoons away when possible. (The latter is easier said than done, according to a bunch of people on the Internet.)
Labels: MRSA
posted by Jessica Berthold at
3:35 PM
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
Depressed people were almost three times as likely to have impaired cognition after gloomy weather in one study. Researchers screened by phone 16,800 Americans enrolled in a stroke study for signs of depression and then administered a cognition test. Data were correlated with NASA's daily records of how bright sunlight was at any given location for the two weeks before the test. We're not rocket scientists, but two weeks of cloudy weather is enough to fog anyone's senses, let alone people who are already depressed.
This next video starts off with what exercisers knew intuitively: Working out makes one hungrier. But does exercise really make it harder to lose weight? Let's sit on the couch for a while and mull that over ...
-Compiled by the staff of ACP Hospitalist
Labels: medical news of the obvious
posted by Jessica Berthold at
3:55 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Paging Dr. Big Brother
Patients who fail to take their medications properly suffer unnecessary complications, raise health care costs and drive their physicians nuts. We've written articles suggesting potential solutions to this problem, like motivational interviewing. But now those clever R&D guys have come up with an answer that will avoid the effort of patients and doctors actually talking to each other.
"Proteus Biomedical Inc., is testing a miniature digestible chip that can be attached to conventional medication, sending a signal that confirms whether patients are taking their prescribed pills. A sensing device worn on the skin uses wireless technology to relay that information to doctors," report the Wall Street Journal.
Yes, that's right. No longer will you have to ask patients whether they've been compliant with their prescriptions. Just plant a bug in their drugs and wait for the transmissions. And we thought the replacement of internists with computers was just fiction.
Labels: drugs, patient communication
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
9:00 AM
0 Comments
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
We did learn something new from this week's study--research on the elderly can be just as obvious as that focused on children.
Elderly people who neglect themselves or are abused are also more likely to die, according to the latest issue of JAMA. The researchers even state the obviousness of their own point at the start: "Reports of elder self-neglect or abuse are often initiated based on significant concerns for an older person's welfare, health, and safety, perhaps to levels that suggest that there may be strong concerns for the older person's wellbeing."
In other words, reports of dangerous things happening to people seem to be associated with dangerous things actually happening to people.
Labels: medical news of the obvious
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
4:00 PM
0 Comments
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Previous Posts
- More jobs on the horizon for hospitalists?
- Medical news of the obvious
- Seeing red, or fading to black?
- Medical news of the obvious
- Ties that bind, and make you gag
- Medical News of the Obvious
- It's a party! Bring your own alcohol (gel).
- Infectious tidbits
- Get your darn flu shot!
- Patient uses Twitter as he undergoes appendectomy
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