On pain

Janice Lynch Schuster offers first-hand advice on ways of managing chronic pain, here.  She notes:I am not my pain. I am a wife, mother, worker, writer, sister, daughter and friend. My world is rich and rewarding. I want for nothing – save pain relief.  In fact, although the pain may be a permanent fixture, the sensation is impermanent.  Some days are better than others.  I must choose how much I want to let it control my experience—or...

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Tom's Reason to Ride is back

With great disappointment, I sadly announce that “A Reason To Ride’s” founder, Tom DesFosses’ cancer is back.  While Tom started to "A Reason to Ride" because he wanted to give back and raise funds for research he never made the Ride about himself.  Tom founded the ride because many of us have reasons to ride.  His energy and enthusiasm persuaded me to give...

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Them's fighting words!

Gary Schwitzer offers a front-row seat to some conflicting claims.  It all starts with a news release from robotic surgeon David Samadi at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital that was picked up by the American Urological Association (AUA):According to a new study from Detroit, Michigan, robotic prostatectomy yields highly successful long-term prostate cancer results. In...

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So you think you can multi-task

A friend of mine was excitedly discussing her job with a high-tech firm.  "Our meetings are so great and vibrant.  While the sessions are going on, we are all on our computers multi-tasking.  It's so efficient!"Well, no.  There's a lot of evidence that constant interruptions do not improve efficiency and that they also impair quality.  Here's a recent example, published in Human Factors.  It focused solely on interruptions...

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Observing observation status

Brad Flansbaum offers this interesting post about the ambiguities and uncertainties inherent in the current Medicare "two-midnight rule."  He refers to a recent white paper prepared by a group of hospitalists:Months of work have led us to our white paper, entitled, The Observation Status Problem: Impact and Recommendations for Change. The release utilizes a multidimensional data set of significant size and includes...

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Fire!

Earlier this month, Modern Healthcare published a story about the slow movement by hospitals to prevent operating room fires. An excerpt:Despite a slew of news accounts about patients being set on fire in operating rooms across the country, adoption of precautionary measures has been slow, often implemented only after a hospital experiences an accident. Advocates say it's...

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Debunking the debunking

I really don't want to write more about surgical robots, but you folks out there keep sending good material.  Here's an article by a surgeon on ThirdAge.com "debunking the myths about robotic surgery."Let's look some assertions:The robotics technology is expensive and the whole surgical team has to be trained, which can add to the cost. But there’s also a tremendous savings compared with traditional surgery because the patient is out of the...

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Will you be in Panama City in August?

This is a must-see exhibit by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.  A good chance to meet Matt Larsen, STRI’s new director, t...

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Keeping up with the Joneses

img alt="" height="113" src="data:Just by casual observation, I have asserted that a hospital was more likely to acquire a surgical robot if a nearby competitor hospital had already done so.  But this was an untested conclusion, based on viewing websites and highway signs, particularly from community hospitals, like above.  So I was intrigued to see this great article...

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