One method pharmaceutical companies use to promote new medicines is to give free samples to doctors. A new study confirms the technique is highly effective. Read more…
DOCTORS
Too Much Family Love
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.Every patient needs a moment alone, as one woman with a terminal illness and a large band of affectionate relatives made clear. Read more…
A ‘Code Death’ for Dying Patients
By JESSICA NUTIK ZITTER, M.D.In this new age of technological wizardry, doctors have been taught that they can, indeed must, do everything possible to stave off death, but few learn how to help their patients die. Read more…
Think Like a Doctor: Running in Circles Solved!
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.Dr. Lisa Sanders reveals the diagnosis in a mysterious case of an agitated young man with uncontrollable manic behavior. Read more…
The Hospital-Dependent Patient
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.Some fragile survivors of intensive, expensive treatments are like a house of cards, their health collapsing under even a minor stress. Read more…
Think Like a Doctor: Running in Circles
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.Dr. Lisa Sanders challenges readers to solve a tough medical mystery involving a 23-year-old man with uncontrollable episodes of aggressive, manic behavior. Read more…
Made Nervous by the Doctor
By NICHOLAS BAKALARA large review of studies finds that there is truth to the “white coat effect” when it comes to taking a patient’s blood pressure. Read more…
Doctor Priorities vs. Patient Priorities
By DANIELLE OFRI, M.D.For my patient, his wide-angle lens took in the whole of his life, of which diabetes was one small part. For me, in the 20 minutes allotted, my lens was narrowly focused on the disease that posed the gravest and most immediate risk to his health. Read more…
The Diminishing Returns of Modern Medicine
By SANDEEP JAUHAR, M.D.In-hospital mortality after an acute heart attack has dropped 10-fold, from 30 percent to 3 percent, since the invention of the modern cardiac care unit in the 1960s. Can shaving a few more minutes off the time it takes to get hospital treatment possibly yield any additional benefit? Read more…
The Unworried Unwell
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.Rarely does the doctor’s imagination outrun the patient’s, picturing imminent catastrophe from untreated conditions. But it does happen. Read more…
Emergency Rooms Are No Place for the Elderly
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.It’s hard to imagine a health care setting more ill suited for the elderly than today’s emergency rooms. Read more…
Think Like a Doctor: Sweating It Solved!
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.Readers solve the case of a 25-year-old man who can’t stop vomiting until he takes a hot shower. Read more…
Think Like a Doctor: Sweating It Out
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.Can you solve a medical mystery involving a 25-year-old man who becomes sweaty and nauseated and starts vomiting uncontrollably every few weeks? Read more…
Stethoscopes as Germ Carriers
By NICHOLAS BAKALARDoctors’ stethoscopes are contaminated with bacteria that can easily be transferred from one patient to another, a new study found. Read more…
Can Doctors Be Taught How to Talk to Patients?
By TIMOTHY D. GILLIAN, M.D. and MIKKAEL A. SEKERES, M.D.Research suggests that physician communication about important topics is associated with a better quality of life for patients, but teaching communication skills to doctors is not easy. Read more…