All Articles by T. A. McNamee, MD
Dr. McNamee is an associate professor and internal medicine residency program director at Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota.
A New Look at Medical Errors in Residency Training
It’s a phenomenon that medical educators have long suspected but haven’t been able to prove: a rise in medical errors when newly-hatched physicians begin their residency training programs in July. This suspected occurrence has been studied several times, but until recently, no conclusive evidence existed that it actually was true. For the first time, a study based in Australia has been able to demonstrate that this really does happen, but perhaps not for the reasons you’d suspect.
Post-Partum Psychosis – Rare but Real
The existence of post-partum psychosis and post-partum depression has been hotly contested publicly. Tom Cruise’s denouncement of Brooke Shields’ diagnosis of post-partum depression is perhaps the most visible example of the controversy among laypeople, but in the medical literature the reality of both post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis is much more well-established.
Mechanisms of Drug Tolerance
New data emerging from the investigation of the death of Michael Jackson reveal that the iconic pop star was taking very high doses of sedative medications during the course of his career. At the time of his death, it was reported that he was taking at least ten tablets of the powerful sedative Xanax every night. Some report that this was an improvement over his previous ingestion of 30 to 40 tablets nightly.To the uninitiated, doses that high would be lethal. To someone who had developed a tolerance to the medication, however, doses in that range may be necessary to achieve the desired effect.
Time for a Change – Gender Reassignment
I still remember him plainly: middle-aged, married, paunchy around the middle. He didn’t come in to the clinic because he was sick or had a chronic medical illness. He came in because he wanted to be a woman.Gender reassignment was not something I had learned about in medical school. It was mentioned in passing, but there were no lectures about how to correctly dose estrogen for the male-to-female transsexual. I frankly had no idea what to do. I think my surprise and confusion were apparent, as the man blushed a little and suggested that I might want to refer him to a specialist.
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