BACK of the BOOK
Heard in the Blogosphere
Matthew Might
@mattmight
1st rule of Slide Club is you do not ask for my slides in
advance. 2nd rule of Slide Club is YOU DO NOT ASK FOR
MY SLIDES IN ADVANCE.
mcsassymd
@mcsassymd
If you want to know how pervasive Epic is, I have started
putting *** in my writing projects for words/sentences that
I need to come back to
Aaron Logan, MD, PhD
@hemedoc
Little known fact: part of the reason clinical trials are so
expensive is to pay for all the SIGN HERE stickies.
Simple Questions, Difficult Answers
“Few simple questions are as difficult to answer as the perennial ‘What
did the doctor say?’ … The words spring from our lips, almost of their
own accord, whenever a loved one returns from a doctor’s visit. But why
should the answer to this question be difficult? The usual suspects
– inadequate patient education, differences in cultural perceptions,
problems of health literacy – all overlook an important fact: Medicine is
a foreign language. It is not foreign because of ‘big words,’ [but] rather,
the hedging, equivocation and other linguistic devices that doctors
reflexively use obscures the plain meaning of their words. … Can a
patient be faulted for not knowing what the doctor said?”
—Richard Klasco, MD, and linguist Lewis H. Glinert, PhD, on the linguistic acrobatics that contribute to
patient-physician miscommunication, in The Washington Post
Patients Versus Paperwork
“Like some virulent bacteria doubling on the agar plate, the electronic
medical record (EMR) grows more gargantuan with each passing
month, requiring ever more (and ever more arduous) documentation to
feed the beast. … More and more doctors are concluding that the over-
bearing EMR actually jeopardizes patient safety, by pushing patients
to the margin of the medical encounter. It’s time, then, to take action,
as we do in other areas that harm patients. Health systems should be
required to periodically measure the EMR burden, and should be fined
when it detracts too much from face-time with patients. … Things
might actually change when money is on the table.”
—Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at New York University, discusses the potentially
dangerous side effects of the growing documentation burden, in The New York Times
Navneet Majhail, MD
@BldCancerDoc
Discuss hospice with patient/family, then come out of
room - hit reset button - go into next room to share good
news about disease in remission with next patient/family
#DayInLifeOfOncologist
Charlie M. Wray, MD
@WrayCharles
If you want to be a good medical educator, hang out with
a toddler. Their incessant ‘whys’ will teach you how to
explain complex topics in the most simple manner possible
Follow ASH and ASH Clinical News on:
@ASH_Hematology, @BloodJournal,
@BloodAdvances, and @ASHClinicalNews
Facebook.com/AmericanSocietyofHematology
@ASH_Hematology
ASHClinicalNews.org
For Genomic Sequencing in Cancer, More Promise Than Proof
Having heard encouraging stories about individualized cancer treatment,
people diagnosed with cancer are asking with increasing frequency to
have the DNA of their tumors sequenced. But is the precision medicine
hype getting too far ahead of the facts? In part of a series of reports
for NPR’s Morning Edition, doctors discussed the limitations of using
genomic data to guide treatment of a patient with glioblastoma.
“We’re getting better, but like
many things in life, there’s
hope and hype. And that’s
also the reality with precision
medicine right now. … We have
this knowledge [about tumor
sequencing data], but it’s not
enough. You have to prove
that acting on that knowledge
– some medical intervention –
will actually afford benefit for
patients. That’s the trickiest,
toughest part about looking at all
these types of genomic tests, to
really prove that this is making
a difference in the lives of our
patients.”
—Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, professor of oncology
and associate director of the Hematology/Oncology
Fellowship Program at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel
Comprehensive Cancer Center
“There are a few cancers where
DNA analysis does make a
clear difference, but in other
cancers, it’s an open question.
At the same time, this testing is
available commercially as well as
at academic medical centers, and
is being done. Patients want it,
providers want it. … We think it’s
important to capture information
[on what treatments patients
received] as well, to try to learn
from it, because in many cases
it’s not going to be effective, but
in some it is. It’s important for us
to figure that out.”
—Josh David Lauring, MD, PhD, assistant professor
of oncology at Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
ASH Clinical News
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