Distracted Doctoring

December 27, 2011

This review by John Halamka is worth a read.  He discusses the emerging phenomenon of distracted doctoring – physicians preoccupied with technology at the expense of patient care.  The review was followed closely by a New York Times piece on the same subject. We’re experiencing a crisis of information.  Our channels of input have crossed [...]

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Doctors and the Permission to Speak

December 16, 2011

Let’s say you’re a doctor and you have an idea, opinion, or a new way of doing things.  What do you do with it? It used to be that the only place we could share ideas was in a medical journal or from the podium of a national meeting.  Both require that your idea pass [...]

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Social Tools Don’t Create New Motivations

December 13, 2011

Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody suggested, “Social tools don’t create new motivations so much as amplify existing ones.”  People use applications to meet a need. I often tell the story of a pediatrician friend I met for lunch a couple of years back.  After ‘selling’ him on the merits of blogging and Twitter, he [...]

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Physicians, Risk and Opportunity in the Digital Age

December 12, 2011

This is a general narrative of Pediatric Grand Rounds that I delivered at Texas Children’s Hospital on December 2nd, 2011.  I have included select graphics that were used during the presentation.  I want to thank Dr. Mark Ward for inviting me to speak here at Pediatric Grand Rounds.  The dilemmas and concerns surrounding physicians and [...]

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A Doctor’s Reputation is Not a Hospital’s Responsibility

December 8, 2011

I spoke to a group of academic physicians recently.  Afterward I was and asked, “Shouldn’t my hospital be responsible for my digital footprint?  I don’t have time to look after that sort of thing.  And wouldn’t it make sense for them to promote my research?” 4 thoughts: 1.  Online reputation management of academic physicians should [...]

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The Stethoscope’s Quiet Eclipse

December 5, 2011

My concerns about the stethoscope’s future began at lunch recently among a group of doctors where it was suggested that the revered icon had evolved as an ornament of clinical medicine – an iconic relic of medicine’s past.  Others around the table held firmly to the idea of the stethoscope as a critical diagnostic tool.  [...]

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You Need to Make Something

December 3, 2011

I know this woman – a physician.  She spends a lot of time on Twitter.  She has a Tumblr presence but it’s sparse and not very memorable.  All day long she polishes her Twitter presence.  She’s everyone’s friend.  And to her credit she’s a wonderful curator.  We caught up recently and she wanted to know [...]

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Engage with Grace – Again and Again

November 23, 2011

This is my 3rd year participating in The Engage with Grace Blog Rally.  Engage With Grace is a movement designed to help advance the conversation about the end-of-life experience.  It began with a simple idea:  Create a tool to get people talking.  Their tool is a slide with five questions designed to initiate dialog about [...]

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Book Notes: Meaningful Use and Beyond

November 20, 2011

I don’t know much about health IT and I know less about meaningful use.  So when Meaningful Use and Beyond – A Guide for IT Staff in Health Care (O’Reilly Media) by Fred Trotter and David Uhlman was released last month I bit the bullet and dove in.  I looked at this book as my personal [...]

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Buzzing Pagers

November 16, 2011

It’s funny what we remember.  As a 3rd year medical student rotating in surgery I remember quite clearly sitting in my attending’s office at Worcester Memorial Hospital.  He was a vascular surgeon.  I don’t remember his name.  On this particular day I had followed him to his office after rounds.  He had just received his [...]

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