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 is equivalent to having prescribing power.

At the very least, a good medical team or ICU team will have a pharmacist as part of the team to help with medications. This includes making sure the patient has no allergies, that there is no resistance or cross reactivity between medications, and checking to make sure the prescribed medication is clinically indicated. In this situation the pharmacist is sort of like the medical case manager. He or she “owns” the prescriptions of that team. 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 is a “bone doctor,” then what do you call a physiatrist? I would call us “function doctors.” While that title is not as flashy as the other ones, it is equally important. The old adage is that nobody knows what a physiatrist does until they need one. Read more →