How to teach clinical medicine – lessons learned by studying sore throats for 35 years

Over approximately 3 months the residents enrolled slightly more than 300 patients into the initial sore throat study.

EBM, Guidelines – intended and unintended consequences

We need shorter, more focused guidelines. We need the honesty to provide the probability of benefits and risks.

A P4P story

Since quality has many dimensions, we must worry that focusing on some dimensions will decrease our attention to other important dimensions.

The SGR Fix and quality measurement

They often do not want undesirable side effects from medications even if those medications are proven to help their disease.

Goodbye to the SGR – the value of organized medicine

For those who always blame organized medicine for problems, I hope you will rethink what these organization try to do.

Teaching diagnostic reasoning

Unfortunately, we who value the art of diagnosis are handicapped because diagnostic excellence is difficult to document with measures.

Diagnostic errors are nothing new

JAMA went into their archives to publish this 100-year-old article – Why Physicians Err in Diagnosis (subscription necessary)

Learning from the detectives

The best detectives obsess, not willing to give up on finding the answer. They keep searching until the answer becomes crystal clear.

The danger of admission diagnoses (ht @medicalaxioms)

If we hope to decrease diagnostic errors, we must emphasize not labeling patients with a diagnosis until we have sufficient certainty.

Health care IT and the airline industry

We clearly should look to the airlines and how they use technology for airplanes.  To not do so puts our patients at risk.