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By Elaine Schattner M.D., on August 9th, 2010
There’s been a recent barrage of med-blog posts on the unhappy relationship between doctors and electronic communications. The first, a mainly reasonable rant by Dr. Wes* dated August 7, When The Doctor’s Always In, considers email in the context of unbounded pressure on physicians to avail themselves to their patients 24⁄7. That piece triggered at least two prompt reactions: Distractible Dr. Rob’s** essay on Why I Don’t Accept eMail From Patients and 33 Charts’ Dr. V on The Boundaries of Physicians Availability.
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of these three guys’ essays is that, in 2010, there’s still a question about whether doctors should use email to communicate with patients. It’s hard for me to imagine physicians – including bloggers — so disconnected. But many are.
Last year, I had the opportunity to speak with Professor Nathan Ensmenger, a historian of technology at the University of Pennsylvania who’s studied physicians’ use of the Internet and email. Physicians
See more Doctors Not Using Email Like It’s 2010
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on August 6th, 2010
A front-page story on the Humanities and Medicine Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, here in Manhattan, recently added to the discussion on what it takes to become a doctor in 2010. The school runs a special track for non-science majors who apply relatively early in their undergraduate years. Mount Sinai doesn’t require that they take MCATs or the usual set of premedical science courses – some college math, physics, biology, chemistry and organic chemistry — before admission.
The idea of the program is two-fold: first, that the traditional med school requirements are a turn-off, or barrier, to some young people who might, otherwise, go on to become fine doctors; second, that a liberal arts education makes for better, communicative physicians and, based on the numbers published in a new article, a greater proportion who choose primary care.
Today Orac, a popular but anonymous physician-scientist blogger, considers the issue in a very long post. His
See more Back to Basics – But Which Ones?
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on August 3rd, 2010
The question is, what’s the right, PC and emotionally-sound, sensitive but not sappy term to describe the situation of a person who’s living after breast cancer? Some might say, who cares if you’ve had it?
See more The “Survivor” Term After Breast Cancer: Is There a Better Expression?
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on August 1st, 2010
Today is the start of this year’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.
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Dialog from NBC’s 30 Rock, Season 1, Episode 4 “Jack the Writer” (2006)*:
Tracy Jordan: But I want you to know something… You and me, it’s not gonna be a one-way street. Cos I don’t believe in one-way streets. Not between people, and not while I’m driving.
Kenneth: Oh, okay.
Tracy Jordan: So here’s some advice I wish I would have got when I was your age… Live every week, like it’s shark week.
(No further explanation is given. In the next scene the comedy writers take a one-minute dance break and then Jack provides an intro to GE’s six sigma program.)
shark (adapted image from Wikimedia Commons)
*The 30 Rock episode is copyright-protected, but for a small fee or through a service like Netflix you can access it here. The relevant clip starts at ~1 min, 20 seconds and ends at ~1 min, 54 seconds.
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See more Living Like It’s Shark Week!
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