Doc’s Defamation Lawsuit: The Patient’s Side
Are you familiar with a case in Minnesota where a doctor sued a patient’s son for defamation...
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Skeptical Scalpel
Media Flub: Squeezing Breasts Prevents Cancer?
The media often takes a research study’s findings completely out of context and confuses the...
Read MorePitfalls of Online Outcomes Data for Surgeons
Risk-adjusted 30- to 90-day outcome data for selected types of operations done by specific surgeons and hospitals are now being publicly posted online by England’s National Health Service. According to the site, “Any...
Read MorePatient Falls Off OR Table: System Error?
An anesthetized patient fell to the floor headfirst from an operating room (OR) table during a laparoscopic appendectomy in Scotland. The table had been tilted into an extreme head-down position to facilitate the operation....
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Do Hospitals Profit From Surgical Errors?
It depends on what you read. A study of over 34,000 surgical procedures performed at a hospital...
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Should All Surgeons Undergo Video Assessment?
A superb study by the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative showed that the more skilled...
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Surprising Results of Three Studies
I like studies that question accepted practices. I also like to question studies that question...
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Surgical Site Infection Rates: Good or Bad?
Postoperative acute care visits for clinically significant surgical site infections (SSIs)...
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Shady History Hasn’t Hurt Cosmetic Surgeon’s Online Ratings
There seems to be no shortage of bad doctor stories going around these days. Just when you thought...
Read MoreHow Surveys Mislead
Do you believe that traditional hospitals will be obsolete in the future? A recent survey found that 57% of those polled believed that would happen. The survey, sponsored by the Intel Corporation, involved 12,000 subjects from...
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The Ongoing Decline of Resident Education
A paper from Johns Hopkins looked at traditional, every fourth night calls compared to...
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Controversy Over BMJ Paper Hints at Print Medical Journal Demise
By now, you must be aware of the Canadian mammography study that appeared in the BMJ last week. It...
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Reality Check: Hospital Patient Safety Scores
Imagine you are sick and live in the upper Manhattan section of New York City. Your doctor tells...
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Fist Bumps Instead of Handshakes?
Some well-intentioned researchers from West Virginia University published a small study claiming...
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Discrediting a Paper About Discredited Practices
According to a study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 146 papers appearing in the New England...
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Where Does a Surgeon’s Responsibility End?
A couple of months ago, a post called “Everything’s my fault: How a surgeon says...
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Spreading Infection With Body Hair?
A reader asks: We had an independent nurse evaluate us for upcoming JCAHO [Joint Commission on...
Read MoreSearching for Drugs and Crossing Ethical Lines
Back in September, I blogged about a case of a man in Tennessee who was sedated, intubated, and placed on a ventilator without his consent so that an emergency physician could perform a rectal exam looking for drugs. The court...
Read MoreFinally, the Ultimate Hospital Rating System
Finding out which hospitals are best is like “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Are you tired of seeing conflicting ratings from such once respected sources as Leapfrog, Medicare Compare,...
Read MoreA Purse More Contaminated Than a Toilet Seat? Really?
I’ve been pondering that question ever since this revelation splashed across the Internet. Like most of these groundbreaking discoveries, this one got plenty of media attention. Despite the numerous articles mentioning the...
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