On Admitting Nice, Ethically-Minded People to Med School

This week the Times ran a leading story on a new med school admission process, with multiple, mini-interviews, like speed dating. The idea is to assess applicants’ social, communication and ethical thinking (?) skills: …It is called the multiple mini interview, or M.M.I., and its use is spreading. At least eight medical schools in the United […]

Posted in Future of Medicine, Medical Education, Medical Ethics, Premedical, ScienceTagged , , , , , , , , 3 Comments on On Admitting Nice, Ethically-Minded People to Med School

Reducing Costs by Holding Back on Chemotherapy for Cancer Patients Who are Frail

This is the fourth in a series of posts on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care, by Drs. Thomas J. Smith and Bruce E. Hillner, in a recent NEJM health policy piece. The authors’ third suggestion: to limit chemotherapy to patients with good performance status, with an exception for highly responsive disease, is surely one of the most […]

Posted in cancer treatment, Economics, health care costs, Medical Ethics, Oncology (cancer), PolicyTagged , , , , , , , , 5 Comments on Reducing Costs by Holding Back on Chemotherapy for Cancer Patients Who are Frail

Reducing Cancer Costs by Giving One Drug at a Time, Sequentially

This is the third in a series of posts on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care, based on the late-May NEJM health policy piece. Today we’ll consider the second of the authors’ suggestions: to limit second and third-line treatments to sequential monotherapies for most solid tumors. This particular suggestion, one of the few proposed with which I […]

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Patients’ Words, Unfiltered, Medical Journalism and Evidence

Yesterday’s post was not really about Avastin, but about medical journalism and how patients’ voices are handled by the media. L. Husten, writing on a Forbes blog, cried that the press fawned, inappropriately, over patients’ words at the FDA hearing last week, and that led him to wonder why and if journalists should pay attention to […]

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer treatment, Empowered Patient, health care costs, Medical News, Oncology (cancer), PolicyTagged , , , , , , , , 2 Comments on Patients’ Words, Unfiltered, Medical Journalism and Evidence

Vicious Verbiage Targets Cancer Patients’ Voices, at Cardiobrief

A journalist who covers medical matters of the heart grabbed my attention on the Fourth of July. In The Voice of the Patient: Time To Bring Out the Muzzle?, Larry Husten at Forbes’ Cardiobrief blog, insinuates that the women who spoke at the FDA’s Avastin hearings are simpletons. In his short strip, Husten skips the possibility […]

Posted in Breast Cancer, Communication, Empowered Patient, from the author, journalism, languageTagged , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments on Vicious Verbiage Targets Cancer Patients’ Voices, at Cardiobrief
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