Our series on Medicine and Law is starting to wind down. We’ve covered lots of topics including contract and consent, malpractice, causation, informed consent, and abandonment. Now we will talk about third-party liability. Third party liability means exactly what it says — that a different... Read more →

It is that time of the year again when medical students start appearing on the wards. If you are a third year student you are now likely starting your clinical rotations. If you are a fourth year student you are probably embarking on away rotations to the specialty of your choice. Every physician has... Read more →

Continuing on in our series we will now talk about abandonment and terminating the physician-patient relationship. We’ve previously talked about the contract and consent. Then we moved on to medical malpractice and causation. Finally we discussed informed consent. Now we move on to abandonment. Abandonment... Read more →

I read with interest my fellow Brain Blogger’s article on pharmacists and their essential value to the medical team. While pharmacists do not have prescribing power and often get a bad rap as being “pill counters,” it is clear to me that their position in the medical team food chain... Read more →

I frequently find myself having to explain the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) to the public, and sadly to a lot of healthcare professionals as well. If a cardiologist is a “heart doctor,” a pulmonologist is a “lung doctor,” and an orthopedic surgeon... Read more →

In medicine a lot of physicians categorize their patients as “good” patients or “bad” patients. Good patients are patients whose care is relatively easy for the physician to handle. The patient is compliant with recommendations, is motivated to get better, and is thankful for... Read more →

A physician frequently gets stopped in the hall of the hospital or gets paged by another doctor for an unofficial consult. In medicine, this is called a “curbside consult.” Essentially, one physician would like some input on a case without getting the consulting physician officially involved... Read more →

In response to my last post about informed consent in my Medicine and Law series, several commenters made the point that informed consent is more than just getting a form signed. That ideally it should involve a dialogue between patient and doctor. That the burden of trust is on the doctor to inform... Read more →

As research has moved away from the realm of universities and into the private sector, more physicians are being paid by drug companies to enroll and monitor patients during clinical trials. Private corporations have been the largest sponsors of pharmaceutical research in both Canada and the United Sates... Read more →

The current US healthcare system is broken. Few would argue this point. Rising costs, decreasing reimbursements, more lawsuits, insurance hikes, and an aging population are just some of the difficulties that face both physicians and patients today, and the situation doesn’t seem to be improving. One... Read more →

In an effort to make this blog more interactive, I’ve decided to start a new series of posts focusing on Ethics and Medicine. In this series I will post a series of cases and see what my readers think. Some of these will focus on the ethics of the doctor, some the patient, the hospital, and other... Read more →