Owner: Doctor Anonymous URL:http://doctoranonymous.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 10:25:14 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: Just a guy trying to find the humor in medicine and humor in life while dealing with the daily grind of the American health care system. Site statistics:Click here
Dr. A Show 31 Preview 2008-04-16 14:03:51 Never before in the history of The Doctor Anonymous Show has a guest done his/her own promo - until now. Vijay from Scan Man's Notes has discovered video posting for himself. In his video post above, he shares that he will be a guest on the show on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9pm eastern time (6:30am 4/18 in India). It's a cute intro and it looks like he recorded it on the moon from a lunar landing. But, no criticism here. I really appreciate Vijay having the courage to post a video to talk about his own guest appearance on the show. He shares written comments on a post today entitled, "scan man on BTR." See everyone tomorrow night (or at whatever time the show is where you're at)! Read more:Preview
The Scan Man Interview 2008-04-15 23:09:20 The Doctor Anonymous Show welcomes Vijay from Scan Man's Notes to the show on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9pm Eastern Time. He is a radiologist in India. Not only does he write clinical posts like this one, this one, and this one - on colon cancer. He also has fun posts with great pictures like the one here from where he lives.Back in January, Vijay also started recording podcasts aptly named "Scan Man Speaks." In addition, he's started to venture into video. He made a video comment to one of my Viddler videos. Make sure you scroll down to the comments section, but you can check out his video comment here. (Also check out the music in the background of his video comment) Finally, he initially started out his blog anonymously. But, about 5 months into blogging, he revealed his real identi
Show 31 Wrap-up 2008-04-17 23:08:44 Thanks so much for Vijay from Scan Man's Notes for being on the show. (Video post above) He has been a long supporter of the show and I appreciate that. We talked about the training system in his country to become a physician. Did you know that radiology was not his first choice? We talk about that a little bit as well. And then, he started exhibiting some of the typical radiology arrogance that I see every day and I just had to shut him up (just kidding). Thanks also to Mexico Med Student for flying in the co-pilots seat tonight for the show. At the beginning of the show, he talked about his current status as far as from an educational standpoint. And, then we talked about his recent post from today in which he very poignantly described his health scare. Somethings things happen the way t
Misuse of 911 emergency 2008-04-21 13:10:04 For the state of affairs around these parts, this story from our local newspaper is shocking, and yet, sad at the same time. I'll let this story speak for itself...Warren – A man who police say kept them busy searching for his missing 2-year-old son has been charged with misuse of 911. Police reported that [the man] called 911 Saturday afternoon to report his son missing. Six police officers searched the area for an hour, but couldn’t find the boy. When his wife returned home with her son, [the man] reportedly told police he knew his son was with her. According to the report, [the man] was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
The pressure of posting 2008-04-20 21:35:40 This post is going to ramble. So, consider yourself warned. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that I have not been writing that much on this blog. And, I just wanted to get some thoughts out there so that they don't keep smoldering inside me.Every time I sit down to try to write something, I feel nothing there - at least lately. The evolution of this blog is such that I started talking about patients a little bit. Then, move onward to talking about current events and topical things. And, now, I'm experimenting a little bit with a live internet radio show format and video blogging.Especially in this latest chapter of my blogging life, I've always wanted to continue with writing on this text blog. I just don't know what I do to myself. I know I have written about this feeling here befor
With age comes happiness 2008-04-20 17:43:24 Every day, older people come to see me in my office saying, "Doc, I don't know why they call this 'The Golden Years' because there is nothing golden about them." And, then, they go into their medical concerns that, hopefully, I can help them out with. But, I do have good news for older Americans because there is new research being released stating that the happiest Americans are the oldest (Associated Press).A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches and pains and the deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, [researcher] Yang said.This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Read more:comes
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Kevin MD & USA Today 2008-04-23 06:30:37 Kevin Pho, from the Kevin MD blog (and former guest on The Doctor Anonymous Show), is one of the most recognized medical bloggers out there. This morning, Kevin has an op-ed published over on the USA Today
website about defensive medicine entitled "Wasted Medical Dollars." Here's an excerpt:A recent analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that more than half of the dollars in our $2.2 trillion health care system are wasted.Medical errors, inefficient use of information technology, and poorly managed chronic diseases were all cited as factors. Dwarfing these reasons is a phenomenon in which doctors order tests to avoid the threat of a malpractice lawsuit. This is known as 'defensive medicine.'At $210 billion annually, defensive medicine is one of the largest contributors to wasteful sp Read more:Kevin
, USA Today
Reality Check: Surgeon Shortage Looms 2008-04-22 15:54:24 There have been many in the medical blogosphere who have (correctly) predicted the soon-to-be disaster of a shortage of primary care physicians. I, of course, agree with my primary care and family physician brethren on this point. Well, now, there is new data from the University of Washington stating that General Surgery as a specialty is soon going to be in a world of hurt because - frankly, there are no medical students going into it. Obviously, this is part of the super-specialty revolution where generalists - whether they be general medicine physicians or general surgery physicians - are going to be more rare.I find it ironically funny (in some strange way) that the quote below used to describe the shortage for general surgeons is vaguely familiar and kind of deja vu like when I rememb Read more:Check
, Surgeon
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, Reality Check
Grand Rounds 2008-04-22 13:16:03 Grand Rounds
4.31 is now up and running over at Dr. Val and the Voice of Reason. She has grouped the post by feeling, which I don't think has ever been done before. And, she added a little cute tagging system to point out the especially good posts of the week.I admit that I have been a slug and not writing as much and contributing to Grand Rounds
. I feel badly about that. But, I'm feeling a little resurgence, so maybe the posts will start flying again. Thanks to Dr. Val for including my post this week:Dr. A from Doctor Anonymous wonders if peace and contentment come from accepting one's lot in life. His post is called, "With Age Comes Happiness?"If you don't know what Grand Rounds is, it is a weekly compilation of the best posts from the medical blogosphere that moves to different sites ea Read more:Grand
Pee brings the world together 2008-04-21 21:36:52 Now, you're going to think that I'm totally making this story up and that it's untrue. Well, it's from MSNBC, so you can make your own conclusions there. Anyway, here's the first sentence from the story, "Pee from more than 4,000 volunteers shows that people from different nations often have spectacularly different metabolisms."And, off we go! Ok, so, I'm trying to visualize the newspaper ad that had to go out on this one: "Seeking pee from people worldwide for research study." And, they got 4,000 people to participate? Fascinating. What did they find? Well, different people from different nations had different metabolites in their urine (no kidding)."For instance, Chinese and Japanese people are almost identical genetically, which isn't surprising, since they diverged culturally only a fe Read more:together
Surgical "Cure" for Diabetes 2008-04-21 21:23:21 So, one of my patients today asked me about a surgical cure for diabetes. The only things I ever heard about were experimental procedures with the islet cells of the pancreas or something along those lines. But, then, the patient said something about gastric bypass surgery. I was mildly intrigued.This person said that they they saw a report on 60 minutes. "Oh great," I thought to myself. So, I checked out the website over there and there is not one but about four videos over there talking about this. You're going to love this. The titles of the reports are the following: The ABCs of gastric bypass surgery; Diabetes
cure?; Immediate relief; and Here's the hitch.So, if for anything else, to get me up to speed with what my patients are watching, these reports claim a "cure" for diabetes - mea Read more:Surgical
Blog Fatigue and Podfading 2008-04-21 20:55:41 The Clinical Cases and Images blog picked up on my recent post named "The Pressure of Posting." They raise the question of whether blogging in general has kind of become passe and yesterday's news. With so many different ways to express yourself like Twitter (guilty of being on too much), Facebook, and other social networking sites, has the blog become kind of ancient?In the world of podcasting (of which I would call myself a very minor player), there is a term called "Podfading." It is a situation in which a podcast either becomes more and more infrequent or just stops abruptly - thereby leaving the audience not quite knowing what to do. A definitely parallel can be made with blogs, video blogging, or any other new media product.In applying all of this to me (since this is my blog, you kn Read more:Fatigue
Dr. A Show 32: Kevin MD & Dr. Val 2008-04-24 00:04:09 Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 9pm Eastern TimeJoin us tonight for The Doctor Anonymous Show . Isn't it great how things come together? Two days ago, I had zero scheduled guests. But, how things change almost overnight... (See video post above)I'm very happy to announce that Kevin
MD will be back on the show to talk about his 4/23/08 USA Today Op-Ed piece entitled "Wasted Medical Dollars" talking about the reality of the practice of defensive medicine. As of this posting, there are already about 30 total comments on Kevin's site and on the USA Today site. Interesting discussion.Normally, that would be enough for one show. But, wait, there's more! Dr. Val will also be joining the show at some point to discuss a bunch of things. First, Revolution Health is celebrating their one year anniversa
Prevent Prostate Cancer: Masturbate 2008-04-23 16:53:56 The scene above is from Seinfeld. The episode is called "The Contest." The phrases "master of my domain" and "king of the castle" are in this episode. Check it out above to see the beginning of the episode. What does this have to do with preventing prostate cancer? Well, I'll let the story below explain itself:Men who frequently masturbate appear to have a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, Australian researchers reported. Researchers from the Cancer
Council of Victoria found that men who masturbated more than five times each week were one-third less likely to develop the cancer.Researchers told the BBC last week that the prostate produces one of the fluids involved in ejaculation and that frequent masturbation appears to flush out carcinogens. Sexual intercourse may not have the s Read more:Prostate
, Masturbate
Show 32 Wrap-up 2008-04-25 05:19:52 Thanks so much to my guests Kevin MD and Dr. Val for coming on the show. (See video post above) Not only did Kevin talk about his recent USA Today Op-Ed piece, but also why physicians should write opinion pieces for blogs, for newspapers, and other media sources.Dr. Val talked about her great week which included her interview with the former surgeon general of the United States, her Grand Rounds hosting experience, her running of a conference call celebrating the first year anniversary of Revolution Health, and her quote in the Wall Street Journal.I was only able to schedule 60 minutes live time and we went another 30 minutes over. In this last 30 minutes, we talked about personal health information out there on the internet. Great conversation and springboard for our guest next week who i
Medical Marijuana discrimination? 2008-04-27 22:07:06 Here is a simple, yet, controversial question: If someone has used marijuana - even if used for medical reasons - should this prohibit him or her from being considered to be on a transplant list? Hospitals throughout this great nation struggle with this question every day. Timothy Garon (pictured above) is a patient at the University of Washington Medical Center. He has end stage Hepatitis C and, according to this Associated Press story, may be in his final days without a liver transplant.But Garon's been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons. "I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused," said Garon, lying in his hospital bed a few minutes after a doctor told him the hospital transplant commi Read more:Marijuana
Praying parents of DKA child charged 2008-04-28 23:02:34 You may remember this story from last month. An 11 year-old girl died following the complications of untreated diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). Now, DKA is a serious condition and strikes fear in anyone who has diabetes. However, if recognized early, this is a treatable. And, for the most part, DKA has a good recovery rate.The parents of this child
did not see it necessary to seek medical attention for their daughter. Instead, they felt that faith alone along with prayer would be enough to heal their daughter. This Associated Press story continues:Madeline Neumann died March 23 -- Easter Sunday -- at her family's rural Weston home. Her parents were told the body would be taken to Madison for an autopsy the next day. "They responded, 'You won't need to do that. She will be alive by then,"' the
Dr. A Show 33: Dr. John Halamka 2008-05-01 05:01:37 Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 9pm Eastern TimeJoin us tonight for The Doctor Anonymous Show . Our guest will be Dr. John Halamka who is Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the blog called Life as a Healthcare CIO. He is also an emergency physician, and apparently, a Blackberry guy. I'll have to ask him some iPhone questions just to be funny. You can even take part in the chat room. It is truly "The show within the show." You can even call in and say hello. A great opportunity to interact with medbloggers you've only read about. See you for the show!For first time Blog Talk Radio listeners:*Although it is not required to listen to the show, I encourage you to register on the BlogTalkRadio site prior to the show. I think it will make the
The John Halamka Interview 2008-04-30 05:09:52 The Doctor Anonymous Show is proud to welcome John D. Halamka, MD who is the Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the blog called Life as a Healthcare CIO.I did want to share a couple of excerpts from his blog - The first of which I call the "Geek Doctor" portion from a post entitled "Designing the Ideal Electronic Health Record:"I was posed a simple question - If I had infinite resources, infinite time, and no legacy compatibility issues, how would I design the electronic health record of the future?The web is the way. Given the 24x7 nature of healthcare, the need for physicians to be in many physical locations, and the multitude of clinician computing devices, the ideal EHR should be web-based, browser neutral and run flawlessly on
Show 33 Wrap-up 2008-05-01 22:31:15 Thanks so much to my guest Dr. John Halamka for being on The Doctor Anonymous Show. Very knowledgeable guy. So much so that I have to admit that I was a little intimidated after doing research for this interview. But, to my pleasant surprise, not only is he a knowledgeable guy, a very nice guy - and funny.We talked about his early love for medicine and technology. He is the first physician in his family and talked about how he built his first computer. Then, the talked about how he used this passion for technology in medical school and in residency. Following his emergency medicine residency, the pursued a fellowship in Health Informatics and then eventually ended up in his position right now which is Chief Information Officer at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.How do you inc
Doctors Overmedicating Kids 2008-05-05 06:09:49 You've probably seen this your morning news stories, but doctors are being blamed (imagine that) for overmedicating kids (again). In fact, according to a study reported by the Associated Press, American children are taking what are called "anti-psychotic" drugs at a rate six times higher than children in the UK.Does it mean U.S. kids are being over-treated? Or that U.K. children are being under-treated? Experts say that's almost beside the point, because use is rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And with scant long-term safety data, it's likely the drugs are being over-prescribed for both U.S. and U.K. children, research suggests.What are "anti-psychotic" drugs? Well, according to the article, the most commonly prescribed drugs in the UK in this study have the names of risperdal and thi Read more:Doctors
Grand Rounds 2008-05-06 21:41:58 Grand Rounds
4.33 is now up and running over at Suture For A Living. (apologies for the late posting of this today). There is no theme this week. But in addition to the great posts, there are some great pics! Thanks to Dr. Ramona for including my post this week:Dr Anonymous asks a simple, yet, controversial question: If someone has used marijuana - even if used for medical reasons - should this prohibit him or her from being considered to be on a transplant list? Hospitals throughout this great nation struggle with this question every day.If you don't know what Grand Rounds
is, it is a weekly compilation of the best posts from the medical blogosphere that moves to different sites each week. And, who doesn't like reading about medicine and science? Next week, Grand Rounds moves to the site Read more:Grand
Vegas Nite One 2008-05-08 00:57:12 Wish you were here! What's the caption? Gimme your best shot... Read more:Vegas
Viva Las Vegas 2008-05-07 09:04:30 As I mentioned previously on The Doctor Anonymous Show, there will be no show for May 8, 2008 since I will be out of town. Where am I going? Well, I will be in Vegas
Baby! (see video post above) In case anyone is interested, here is the current forecast for Vegas (They say it's a dry heat, right?)I'm going out there with people from the hospital for a conference. I haven't even looked at the schedule yet, but I hope that it's not an all day thing. What's the time difference out there, anyway? I guess I'll find out. With me being on call last weekend, I'm still catching up on things and haven't been able to think ahead that much.Our flight leaves this afternoon and we'll be arriving there in the early evening tonight. I hope to be shooting some video out there and posting it here. Wouldn't Read more:Viva Las Vegas
Vegas Recap 2008-05-09 09:52:36 I can't believe that I'm going back home later today. Had a great time out here. Check out the video above and you'll get the recap on my two quick days/nights here in Las Vegas
. Have a great weekend, everybody! Read more:Recap
Only in Vegas (airport) 2008-05-08 17:44:49 I have a headache this morning for some reason (and I don't know why). Anyway, I knew no one was going to believe this when I told them, but this person (see video post above) was on the same plane with us arriving to Vegas
. So, while in baggage claim, why not shoot a little video. Everyone else was. More video posts soon (when I can edit them). Read more:airport
Show 34 Preview and other stuff 2008-05-13 22:21:20 I don't know about you, but this has just been a crazy week for me. Why is it that you're getting ready to take a vacation (even 2 days), you're really busy before you leave AND you're busy when you get back? That has happened to me this week. That's why I've been quiet here and even on Twitter this week.BTW, if you haven't already, check out Grand Rounds 4.34 over at the Health Business Blog by D Read more:Preview
, stuff
Show 34 apology 2008-05-15 21:53:03 What a frustrating night! Show 34 started off well. I told my little Las Vegas story and I thought things were going well. I took a musical "commercial" break, and then my connection was gone. Then, computer problems. I took the next 20 minutes to try to figure things out, but was unsuccessful.I remember back to those first shows last summer when I literally had a technical glitch for every show.
Dr. A Show 34: Vegas Vacation 2008-05-14 22:38:51 Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 9pm Eastern TimeThe Doctor Anonymous Show returns after being off last week for show number 34. There are no scheduled guests, but don't let that stop you from tuning into the show. Last week, I was in Las Vegas
for a couple of nights and that was a great time (check out last week's posts and video if you haven't already. Have you been to Vegas? Well then, call into the Read more:Vacation
New Blogger Alert 2008-05-16 11:07:04 This morning, I was notified that someone called "ruraldoctoring" is now following me on twitter. So, as I usually do, I check out the blog. And, it looks like this blogger just started this week. Remember when you first started blogging and wondering whether anyone would read your stuff? Here's an introduction:My name is Theresa Chan. I'm a family physician working in rural Northern California. T Read more:Blogger
, Alert
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