Thursday, August 21, 2008
Pal-Pourri
1) Pain Control Prognosis
The recent July/August 2008 (not online yet) issue of Pain Medicine News had an interesting article focused on the prognostication of pain control. It is nice to see prognosis referring to other medical outcomes besides life and death. Unfortunately, only half the Q&A format focuses on that issue, while the end of the article highlights developments in the field of pain medicine.
A new term (to me) used in the article was 'rational polypharmacy.' I chuckled when I read that. I just hear in my head, 'Yeah, I know they are on a lot of different medicines. They need to be on each of them, so the interactions or cumulative side effects don't really matter.'
2)Headline 2050: Hospice No Longer Needed!
Looks like there is a non-profit organization looking to decrease the number of patients hospices may serve. Here is a snippet from the Methuselah Foundation's mission: The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit 501c(3) organization committed to the acceleration of progress toward a cure for age-related disease, disability, suffering, and death. Apparently death from non-age-related diseases (i.e. cancer, congestive heart failure, etc) are not part of their focus. But I guess since they are trying to find a cure for suffering from age related diseases they may actually have a palliative focus, so we got that goin' for us, which is nice.
3)Behind Door #1
Dogs maul a cancer patient at home. Hey all you home hospice staff, please be careful hospice staff when entering a home. The potential subtle and overt threats you face by visiting people in their homes every day is often unappreciated. You have now been appreciated!
4)One Magic 8 Ball Please
I stumbled across this blog post from 2005 for 'prediction registries' to see if in any controversy who was right. There are billions of small and large predictions every day. Just think if the medical field started recording predictions and testing to see who is most accurate.
5)Gotta Love the Gershwin Brothers
For those astute readers who notice that Drew and I think differently about the letter 'L'...feel free to sing along:
Drew says Pall-pourri, and I say Pal-pourri;
Drew says Palliative Medicine Doctor, and I say Palliativist
To-may-to, To-mah-to
Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to
Let's take the extra 'L' off!
Feel free to debate in the comments which is more appropriate.
Have a good weekend!