Tough Talks: How To Ask A Patient About Domestic Abuse
A woman comes into your practice reporting depression and chronic illness. Her arm is mapped with finger-mark bruises and when her cellphone went off a look of panic swept over her face. Clearly, it appears this young lady has something devious going on behind the scenes in her life. But, how do you open up a dialogue about domestic abuse? About 25% of women report a time of domestic abuse being inflicted upon them during their...
Medical Prescriptions for Children Based on Genetics
Approximately 1 in 100 hospital patients suffer adverse side-effects from preventable pharmaceutical errors costing inpatients $2 billion annually. Furthermore, 2 to 4 million people a year suffer from some sort of medicine-caused injury. More troubling though, is the risk of children experiencing drug-related side effects. Children are more susceptible to these sort of negative responses than adults and many have been working to...
Should Doctors Have Mandatory Drug tests and Regulations of Prescriptions?
Many employees in professions are routinely subject to performing drug tests to ensure they avoid dangerous workplace accidents or negligence. Pilots, commercial drivers, and even waiters in some restaurants have rules that allow mandatory drug tests on the suspicion of impairment or after an accident occurs on the job. However, some are starting to wonder why physicians do not have similar guidelines that confirm they are clean of...
Physician Shortages: Why it is Happening and What is Being Done
Medicaid expansion accounts for the majority of sign-ups under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With the primary care physician shortages, the newly insured may not be able to see a primary care physician. Not only that, a large number of primary care physicians refuse to see Medicaid patients. Many Physicians do Not Want to See Medicaid Patients Warnings about the number of physicians that refuse to see Medicaid patients and the...
Millennials Views on Healthcare
A majority of young Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act, according to a December 2013 poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Less than one in three of the “Millennials” in that poll said they planned to get insurance through an exchange if eligible. This general distrust of healthcare may be rooted in other social views held by the Millennial generation, born between 1980 and 1995. This generation will certainly change...