Second Opinion
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Variations in Quantity and Cost of Care
What do rates and cost differ from one location to the next?
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Secret Shoppers in Healthcare
Is it ethical to use secret shoppers to evaluate doctors?
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What Is a Mental Illness?
The new DSM 5 creates the labels...
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Risk in a Crazy World
How do we understand the risk of life?
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Less Is Often More
The lessons of inappropriate care...
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Emergency Contraception
New access for young women who make a mistake.
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Back Pain
Why are there so many treatments?
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Stigmatizing Language
Words really do matter...
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Inattentional Blindness
Failing to see what is right in front of our nose...
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Substance Abuse and New Health Insurance Laws
How will old health problems fare under new laws?
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How Hard to Push?
What do we do when people won't help themselves?
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Conflict of Interest Rules for Drug Company Interactions
Does limiting contact between drug companies and doctors make a difference?
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Politics, Guns and Public Health
Should doctors be involved in politics?
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Abortions, Pregnancies and Roe v. Wade
Can we all agree on pregnancy prevention?
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Prescribing drugs never proven to work
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Drug prices are going through the roof!
Why have drug prices increased?
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Doctors' Hours
Why must doctors work bankers' hours?
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Liberties versus Public Health
When should the government step in to protect us?
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Disease Mongering
Male menopause...
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Research on childhood illnesses
Can we better understand how children perceive research?
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New Hospital Discharge Rules
Hospitals may be forced to work as part of a system...
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Stress
The effect of stress on our health...
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The Impact of Still Births
The loss can be devastating ?
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Intellectual Property Rights
Do we really want to keep poor people from using our drugs?
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Tropical Diseases
Unusual tropical diseases in the US...
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Doctors' Salaries
How much should doctors be paid?
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Medicine Driven by Incentives
Incentives may drive the care you receive...
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Patenting Genes
Should society allow companies to patent genes?
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CNN Has Forgotten Its Mission
CNN chooses to promote a cancer hospital...
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Rationing Health Care
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Frequent Flyers
High utilizers of healthcare
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Is the Physical Exam Necessary?
There are two schools of thought...
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Sleeping with Snorers
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Olympic Syndrome
The importance of labeling an event
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Closet Psychiatrists
Our need for a label when faced with uncertainty...
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Offering CPR when not indicated
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CPR in the Hospital
Is CPR really all it is cracked up to be?
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Testing for Alzheimer's Disease
Are there benefits of testing for Alzheimer's Disease?
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Caution in the Back Yard
Cleaning the barbecue can be dangerous if you're not careful...
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Vitamin D for Preventive Care
Why do we order Vitamin D tests?
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Spending Healthcare Dollars Abroad
How we do benefit from money spent overseas?
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Hospital Translation Services
Translators cost hospitals tens of thousands of dollars each year, but do they make a difference in care?
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Prostate Cancer Screening
The final recommendations are out...
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Traditional Birth Attendants in Africa
With a fraction the number of doctors needed?.
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Advice from behind the Counter
Widespread availability of antibiotics in developing nations... (This week doctor Wilkes is working in rural Nicaragua with a group of medical students and residents.)
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Training More Doctors
Is this the best way to achieve the goals of improved health?
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Getting to the Hospital in an Emergency
Do you really want to ask for preauthorization for 911 services?
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Hearing Impairment and Aging
We need to address this problem with new solutions...
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America's Top Doctors
What decided these doctors were top doctors?
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Foreign Trained Doctors
Where would we be without them?
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Rabies in California
An almost uniformly fatal disease...
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Regardless of the Dose the Drug is Ineffective
When a patent is soon to expire drug companies will pull out all the stops?
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The Greening of Medicine
Are there ways to reduce the carbon footprint of American medicine?
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Drug Company Fraud
What happens when profits overrun safety?
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Caregivers
The unsung heroes of our healthcare system...
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Do Doctors Need Shopping Carts?
Why don't doctors know the cost of medical care?
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Drug Shortages
Why do we keep running out of drugs?
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Low Salt Recommendations
Does it really make sense to cut salt from our diet?
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Hard Fought Battles for Women
Can we employers deny insurance benefits to women?
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Searching for open access to medical research
Medical journals seek to control medical research for prestige and profit
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Students in Foreign Lands
How much should our trainees do when abroad?
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Information Can Be Like a Pill
Information may need to be dosed carefully...
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Deafness and Disability
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A Technology Arms Race
Do robots really improve care?
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Biting the Hand that Feeds You
Are there limits to NPR's sponsorship?
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Emergency Contraception for Teens
A ruling that sets up back decades?
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When a Patient Decides NOT to Know
Contrary to popular opinion there are times you might not want to know...
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Choosing the Best Hospital
Looking at quality of care has become much easier...
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Difficult Discussions
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to talk about end of life care...
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Teenage Drivers
Reducing teen traffic accidents...
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Back Pain and Placebos
What do we tell the patient?
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Why Do the Japanese Live So Long?
Perhaps public health and universal health insurance...
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Why Are People Going to the Doctor Less Often?
One sure way to decrease doctor visits is to increase co-payments?
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Sound Recommendations about Prostate Cancer Screening
Finally, after years of politics, some good common sense...
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New Federal Conflicts of Interest Regulations
Why can't we just say no?
-
Home Blood Pressure Monitoring
Why is blood pressure different in the doctor's office than it is at home?
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Nurses Go on Strike
When is it ethical for health professionals to strike?
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Outlawing Female Circumcision
It often takes more than laws to change cultural practices...
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Expedited Partner Therapy
A more effective way to decrease sexually transmitted infections...
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Medical Scribes
There's a new person working with the doctor in the Emergency Department...
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Be Careful about Unnecessary Genetic Tests
How companies convince doctors to order unnecessary genetic tests...
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It's Not the Person, It's the Pill
Why is it important how a pill looks?
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Is the Doctor's Duty Only to the Patient or to Society...
What does the doctor do with genetic information that could benefit the family?
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The Quest for Beauty
Cultural overtones for skin tones...
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A Giant Step Forward for Women's Health
Free birth control is a winning policy for nearly everyone...
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Doctors Don't Deal with Uncertainty
If we can find the cause it must not exist?.
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New Research Findings with Some Obvious Results
Sometime research doesn't always advance our understanding...
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New rules to reduce medical resident fatigue
Another step to reduce medical errors.
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The Pro-Pharmaceutical Opinion of the Supreme Court
What implications will the Court's ruling have on you and I?
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A listener is angry his doctor asks him to make medical...
Who should make difficult medical choices ? doctors or patients?
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Limiting Care
Please, only one problem per visit!
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Big Problems with Bias
Heavy people are often treated differently by the healthcare system...
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A Sudden Hit to the Head
What is the doctor's duty when there is a sports injury?
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Vermont?s Bold Move on Health Care
The state of Vermont moves toward universal care for all
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A Couple of Odd Causes of Prescription Drug Abuse
Hint: a leading source of illegal prescription drugs is not the guy standing on the corner.
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Medicine as a Team Sport
Imagine if the navy seals worked the same way doctors do
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Doctors' Data and the Supreme Court
Why would anyone care about what drugs I prescribe?
-
Nurse Midwives
With so few midwives, are we missing an opportunity?
-
Music and Medicine
What are the similarities between an expert musician and an expert physician?
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An Ounce of Prevention May Still be Too Much
Preventive approaches may not be all they are promoted to be
-
Cat Scans Also Cause Radiation
For us the great health danger from radiation is from unnecessary tests.
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Health Problems from Nuclear Exposure
What lessons can we learn (again) from Fukukshima?
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Hospital Discharge, Part I
Sorry to be rude, but it?s time for you to go home? (Click on more for key questions to ask the doctor, social worker or care manager when discussion nursing home care, as well as understand its staffing, philosophy and user friendliness.)
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Race and Medicine
How we use race in medicine can lead to assumptions that are wrong...
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An Infection We Often Don't Think about in the Elderly
Why would an elderly woman develop fever, low white blood cells and stomach pains?
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Making Complicated Medical Decisions
The more information we get the tougher the decision becomes.
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Trying to Become a Female Surgeon
Even in 2011 being a female doctor just isn't the same as being a male doctor...
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Physicians Talking to Parents about Guns in the Home
Does it make sense to outlaw such discussions?
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PTSD in Returning Soldiers
Stigma and the mental wounds of war...
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Incentives to Get Doctors to Use a Particular Drug
How does one drug company get doctors to use its drug?
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Two Drugs of Unequal Cost
Why is it a drug company would not seek FDA approval for a new indication for their drug?
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Under-Treatment of Pain
Why can?t doctors figure out how to treat pain better?
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Is There a Link between Economic Hard Times and Our...
As unemployment rates rise death rates should?fall?
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A Pain Pill That Should Have Been Banned Long Ago
Why can't we act swiftly when there is overwhelming evidence of harm?
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Does a Doctor's Religion Make a Difference?
-
Do healthy people need to take a multiple vitamin?
There are many things you should know about your doctor, one might be how religious they are...
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Preventive Health in People with an Advanced Cancer
How aggressively should we look for new cancers in people who already have life threatening illnesses?
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Why Do We Still Make Residents Work 80-Hour Weeks?
One sure way to improve the quality of care is to require junior doctors to work reasonable hours?
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Paying for Drugs for Rare Diseases
As a society how do we develop new drugs to treat important diseases?
-
Teen Pregnancy
Does providing teens with birth control increase their chance of becoming sexually active?
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Birth Control Pills and Sexual Activity
Does starting a young woman on birth control pills lead to earlier onset of sexual activity?
-
In Vitro Fertilization ? a remarkable discovery!
While many infertile couples can now have children, there remain many ethical and legal dilemmas
-
What Needs to Go in the Medical Record?
Does everything you tell the doctor need to be written in the record?
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Memory Loss
-
The Loss of Altruism
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Testing Pregnant Women to See if They Smoke
Is it good preventive medicine to test women to see if they smoke cigarettes?
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Reporting Child Abuse
Doctors have a difficult decision deciding when to report suspect child abuse...
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Literacy and Health
An unrecognized barrier to good health turns out to be a poor ability to read..
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A New Diagnosis of a Genetic Condition
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US Ranked 9th in End of Life Care
We could do much better but we need to take some important steps.
-
Drug Companies' Priority: Make Profits, Not Protect...
Why is it is that we are repeatedly not told the truth about the safety of prescription drugs?
-
Foreign Trained Health Doctors Working in the US
Is brain drain always a problem for poorer nations?
-
Rethinking Medical Education, Part II
How can we have healthcare reform with changing the way doctors are trained?
-
Summertime in Medicine
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Refusal of Care
What happens when the patient and the doctor disagree about hospital discharge?
-
Sexting
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Public Attitude toward Healthcare Technology
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Colonoscopy: Does the Time of Day Matter?
-
Genetic Testing of College Students
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I'm a little bit worried....
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When Can a Parent Say Enough is Enough?
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Are we any safer with new airport scanners?
What evidence that using scanners at airports make us any safer?
-
The Dangers of Four letter Words
Sometimes there's just no other way to express yourself...
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An Obligation to Participate in Research
How do we advance medical science if people won t participate in research?
-
Swine Flu-One Year Later
Now, a year after we first heard about Swine Flu, how did we do?
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It's All the Result of TV
The amount of television kids watch is having an impact on health...
-
Tomorrow's Doctors
Interest in primary care is still at historic lows leading to questions about the ability to deliver on healthcare reform...
-
Pay for Performance
Can we improve healthcare quality for providing incentives?
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The More You Do the Better You Get
If you want the best outcome you'd best chose the doctor/hospital with the most experience...
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Is the Use of Placebos Always Unethical?
While many medicines don't work for us, it is wrong to use a medicine we know won't work...
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The Ugly Truth About Homeopathy
Why do we tolerate medicines that we know don t work?
-
Under-treatment of Sickle Cell Pain
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Emergency Contraception for People 17 and Older -- but...
Why won't a pharmacy respect the law and sell emergency contraception to a male?
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Incidental Findings
What do we do when the x-ray shows an unexpected shadow?
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Have Family Doctors Given Up on Families?
The American Academy of Family Physicians signs sweetheart deal with Coca Cola...
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The last breaths of life
How do we know what it's really like at the very end of life?
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When People Don't Follow Advice
It's hard to understand why it is that people sometimes make decisions that are not in their best interest...
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Learning about New Drugs
How is it that your doctor decides which drug to prescribe?
-
Effectiveness of Tamiflu
Have we been duped by the makers of Tamiflu?
-
Advanced Dementia Is a Terminal Illness
Hospice care needs to be available to those with illness other than terminal cancer...
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Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!
Sometimes a tincture of time is the very best medicine...
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The Politics of Science
The mammogram debate -- an example of where science and politics just don't belong together...
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Controversy around Mammograms
We have really confused women this week
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The Low-down on Picking Up Diseases Early!
Given the screening tests pick up diseases early, how can they be harmful?
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Looking for Disease in All the Wrong Places
Are we being honest about the usefulness of screening tests?
-
Chaperones during the Exam
Having another person in the room for the physical exam can be a blessing or a curse...
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Futile Care
Should you have the right to receive any medical care you want?
-
Do You Know Any of These People?
We've got a big problem and people are suffering.
-
Rebelling against Mandatory Vaccines
Should your doctor or nurse be required to get the flu shot?
-
How Can We Better Remember to Take Our Medication?
This may be going too far...
-
Follow Up Instructions
What happens when the doctor tells you to "return if...."?
-
Creating Better Doctors?
What if we could give doctors pills to make them faster and smarter?
-
A New Life for a Sluggish Vaccine
Can a vaccine intended to prevent cervical cancer in women, be used in men?
-
Misleading BMI
Can we be overstating the obesity epidemic?
-
Why Do We Still Have Tooth Decay?
Why are we still not fluoridating water?
-
A Note from the Doctor
Why does the doctor need to confirman illness?
-
Screening for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms
Does it make sense to have an ultrasound looking for an abdominal aneurysm?
-
What Is Basic Healthcare Coverage?
As we move toward a national health plan, what do we want covered for everyone?
-
Following Your Moral Compass
Why would a junior surgeon decides to report his superior for an ethical lapse?
-
Is a Therapist a Psychotherapist?
Given the complex area of mental health how do we know who is best able to treat us?
-
Overriding Computer Systems
No one likes computer reminders but sometimes they can save lives...
-
Amenity Units at Hospitals
What's the difference between a Ritz Carlton and a high-end hospital unit?
-
Care That Is Unlikely to Provide Benefits
Who gets to decide if care is futile?
-
Thinking Globally in Tough Financial Times
-
Difficult Doctor Encounters
Why is it that sometimes you and your doctor just don't hit it off?
-
Prisoners Released with HIV
What happens to HIV infected prisoners when they are released from prison?
-
Can nurses substitute for doctors?
What happens when nurses do procedures that were formerly done by doctors?
-
CPR out of the Hospital
Paramedics often have no choice but to provide CPR...
-
Rating Doctors
When we want a good doctor should we look to online rating schemes?
-
Swine Flu 101
An answer to some basic questions about swine flu...
-
Paying People to Get Healthy
Is it worthwhile to give people a financial incentive to be healthy?
-
Respecting Patients' Culture
Our attempt to be respectful of culture can sometimes backfire...
-
Abstinent Promises
-
Who Owns the Medical Record?
What would happen if patients were sent their medical records after each visit?
-
Journals, Editors and Intimidation
What happens when research questions the integrity of a leading medical journal...?
-
Private Hospital Beds
Do you often wish you could have a private bed in the hospital?
-
Normal adolescence: a disease worth treating?
Why do so many teens being treated for ADHD?
-
Preventing the Spread of AIDS in Africa
While the problem is huge, there are steps that people can take to make a difference... (Part III of a three-part commentary.)
-
One Perspective on AIDS in Africa
How can the rate of HIV in much of Africa be so high? (Part I of a three-part commentary)
-
Drug Abuse in the Elderly
Recommended Shows
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