You know, there’s a reason why famous sayings are, well, famous sayings. It’s because they’re true and they usually sum up this truth is just a few words so as to package their neat truism in a tidy little box.

BMJ’s article, New York’s road to health, quickly brought to mind one of those sayings in just two simple words:

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One controversial area where the brain, politics, and law collide is in cases where people suffer severe brain damage and are in a persistent vegetative state (this is more accurately termed complete vegetative state). In this state, the higher cortical functions of the brain are essentially wiped out. The person’s brain stem is often still intact so breathing, swallowing, eye-blink, and other basic functions still can occur. However, without the neocortex (cortex that is not brainstem), the person cannot really see, hear, speak, or think. Read more →

Continuing on in my series of posts about Medicine and the Law, we’ve established that there are two elements necessary for a patient-physician relationship to be established — contract and consent. There must be a written or implied contract in place, and there must be agreement to it on both sides (either written, verbal, or implied through actions). Now we get to the juicy part of the equation — Medical Malpractice. Read more →

I’ve decided to go ahead and post a series on Medicine and the Law. One of the things I hear about so often from both sides of the patient-physician relationship is the fear and threat of legal action. Typically physicians are paranoid of being sued. They practice defensive medicine and go out of their way to write copious notes, dictate exhaustive patient summaries and operative reports. For the practicing physician, all the documentation, paperwork, and reporting is simply exhausting. Sometimes all of the documentation takes up way more time and energy than the actual exam or procedure. It is a sad state of affairs when 90% of the time allocated to a patient is dedicated to documentation rather than with actual time with the patient. Read more →

When it comes to politics, it’s difficult to be a physician these days. There are many strong candidates in the presidential primaries this year. From the Republican side you’ve got a very ethical leader in John McCain. For the Democrats you’ve got a very charismatic and young Barack Obama and a very smart and battle-tested Hillary Clinton. All of them have very interesting ideas about the healthcare system and improving access to medical care.

Physicians as a voter demographic are a tough nut to crack. Read more →

In part one, I gave an example of a book that you could have someone read, when that someone preferred a Biblical version of the age of the earth. The book was Mysteries of Terra Firma: The Age and Evolution of the Earth. The reason I’m suggesting this book as an example is that it takes you through the history of the discoveries. Stories engage minds that are vulnerable to fundamentalist thought. They need the story in order to get more of a gestalt, rather than having facts thrown at them. Facts are like an attack, while a story involves the reader and gains mental real estate in an attractive way. Stories create images and interest in actual people and their struggles. Don’t create a push-pull and arouse knee-jerk defenses. Read more →