Medical Notes: Week of February 18, 2018
A familiar tool in the fight against melanoma, proof we can tell if people are sick by looking at them, an unexpected benefit of going to church, and research on why women avoid certain majors.
Violence Against Healthcare Workers
Experts discuss how and why attacks on healthcare workers occur and how hospitals and health care workers can do a better job preventing them.
Pancreatic Cancer
An advocate and a genetic counselor discuss the state of pancreatic cancer screening and the few alternatives available.
Handshake Bans and Hand Washing (2017)
Experts discuss and describe what it takes to wash hands well enough to be “clean.”
Rural Hospital Closures
Experts discuss the need for rural healthcare and the close link between hospitals and community economics.
Healing Children: Not Just Little Adults
Children’s medicine is more specialized than many people think an expert explains how pediatric practitioners and hospitals are set up to deal with the different biology of children.
A Doctor Who Really Can Feel Your Pain
Dr. Joel Salinas has mirror touch synesthesia, a condition involving cross-wiring in the brain that allows him to feel it when people experience pain.
Elephant DNA: The Secret to Cancer Suppression? (2017)
Some animals, such as elephants, almost never get cancer, and scientists have learned that the elephant DNA repair system is 20 times more powerful than the human system
Difficult Patients
Patients used to accept doctors’ orders without question. Today, more are challenging their doctors’ opinions. However, even those who do it politely are likely to be labeled “difficult.”
Misconstrued Body Basics
Many people have questions about their bodies that seem so silly, they never bring them up with their doctors.
Reengineering the ICU
Hospital intensive care units appear to be a model of high tech, but systems engineers say ICUs are actually models of inefficiency.
Restoring Doctors’ Compassion
A new movement in medicine seeks to put compassion back in medicine.
