Mastodon Grand Rounds Vol 6.52 The Last Edition ~ Pallimed

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Grand Rounds Vol 6.52 The Last Edition

Seattle and Vancouver
Photo by Joan Robinson RN CHPN
Seattle WA
(from the Pallimed Photo Project)
I am not sure if Nick Genes (@blogborygmi) realized this when he approached me about a date to host, but this is the last edition of Grand Rounds for Volume 6.  A hospice blog as final chapter to a great year of medical blogging, there are things in life that are more serendipitous than this of course.  But of course here at Pallimed (@pallimed), we do cover things beyond just the last few days of life. So feel free to take a look at our 1,000 other posts.

On to the best of the medical blogosphere!  No themes here but I did ask (like GruntDoc) to include a post of  other than your submission to help broaden our reach this week.


Quilter and occasional surgeon Ramona Bates (@rlbates) goes altruistic and recommends SanDiegoNavyDoc (@SanDiegoNavyDoc) and his post "They Call Me Doc..." about all the different people that live inside him.  How many different people are inside of you?  She also highlights the always respectful Bruce Campbell 'writing about when patients feel you are giving up on them.'

One of my new favorite blogs to read is The Neurocritic, who I stumbled upon with the recent review of the NEJM Pallaitive Care article and how it can help debunk 'death panel' myths. Read to the very end for why this post is so important to The Neurocritic.

Michelle Wood shares with us a realistic look at the medical uses of the iPad from FutureDocs (@FutureDocs) Vineet Arora "Attending Rounds with the iPad: Hype or Hinderance." I just don't know if I want to buy two iPad's one for isolation rooms and one for non-isolation rooms.

Tony Chen shares a post by Nick Jacobs from the very new American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine blog "When Healing and Science Converge."  This blog has only been around for a couple of months, let's hope they stick with it.

MD from A Medical Resident's Journey writes about the recent WSJ piece on White Coat Ceremonies.  Is empathy teachable?  And bonus sharing with a post from Dr. Wes (@doctorwes) on the same topic, "On Humanizing Medicine."

Doctor Fizzy submits a post from next week's host Dr. Grumpy on the idiocy of e-prescribing. And probably the best new blog I have seen in recent months Doctor Fizzy's own 'A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor.'  I really did enjoy the cartoon descriptions of a headache.

Dr. Rich (@DrRich1) at The Covert Rationing Blog discussed the upcoming Guideline Wars with health reform with the cleverly titled but imaginary SYNTAX trial. Dr Rich also kindly introduced me to The Road to Hellth (by Dr. Perednia) with a post about when a doctor tells his patient how the medical system looks from a doctor's point of view.

Jill of All Trades shares three great blogs that should get more attention, while submitting none of her own.  She would be popular in my kids pre-school class with sharing skills like that! Here they are:
  • Dr. Synonmous, a family practice doc, no relation to Dr. Anonymous that I can tell.
  • Lockupdoc, (@lockupdoc) a psychiatrist in corrections
  • And this was her blog post of note from WhiteCoat's Callroom: What's Fair? about writing prescriptions for OTC medicines in the ED.
How to Cope with Pain shares how some may find meaning in their pain with an Chinese tale. And just for a little light heartedness, a post from 1000 Awesome Things was shared.

Conflict with your doctor? Just switch, everyone is doing it.  Ryan Dubosar blogs at ACP Internist (@ACPInternist) about research showing patients avoid confrontation with doctors.  And Ryan was so nice he shared twice: Toni Brayer and gradydoctor.  Gradydoctor writes so well, especially in this post about dealing with crying and grief in the medical world which was a nice segue into Toni Brayer's post about the importance of touch in medicine.

Apparently Somatosphere (@Somatosphere) and blogger Kalman Applbaum are not afraid of Big Bad Pharma or the backlash from 'complicit doctors' as he reviews the book "White Coat, Black Hat  Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine."

Ken Covinsky writes at GeriPal about Humility in medicne, something that should be talked about more often.  By the way GeriPal (@GeriPalBlog) is an excellent team geriatrics/palliative care blog if you have not seen it already.

Maria Gifford at Better Health interviews Thomas Goetz about his recent book on personalized medicine and more importantly how to make good medical decisions.  Maria also wanted to share a guest blog post from Gary Schwitzer's blog Health News Review about the future of breast and ovarian cancer guidance for women with BRCA mutations.

Elaine Schattner blogs at Medical Lessons (@MedicalLessons) a classic post about how checklists (a la Gawande) may change the culture of medicine. If you ever wondered if you needed more 'poka-yoke' read this post.  Elaine also submitted a blog post from MD Whistleblower (@MDWhistleblower) (aka Dr. Michael Kirsch - he outed himself, I didn't blow any whistles!), titled Evidence-Based Medicine in Disguise: Beware the Surrogate because 'with so much emphasis and real need for greater EBM (evidence-based medicine), we should be aware of its limitations.'

John Schumann at the blog Glass Hospital (such creative names we bloggers have!) gives us a great glimpse into the skill of listening with this post Doctor Yenta. An excerpt:

As an internist, I’m trained to do things:
I listen.  I ask.
I examine, order, and test.
And then I assess.
I certainly try to treat.  All too often, this includesprescribing.
What frequently gets lost in this paradigm is that on many occasions, the listening part is often enough.
John also shares Bob Wachter's Doc on a Plane stories. Honestly we medical bloggers should get together to write a book about doctor/nurse on a plane stories.  They are always so entertaining.

Bongi at other things amanzi shares the next best stories after doctor on a plane stories, urology stories.  Bongi shares the creativity that surgeons can show when faced with a challenging problem when bullets and bladders intersect.

Laika (aka @laikas) shows how other blogs can inspire you to write.  After seeing Musings of a Dinosaur and  db's Medical Rants talk about why orthostatic vital signs should not always be considered scut work. This reminded Laika of a story about PCR and chromosome analysis.  Funny how our brains work sometimes!

Thanks so much for reading this week and thanks again to Nick Genes for organizing Grand Rounds.  Check out next week's host Dr. Grumpy and submit your posts early.

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