Grand Rounds Vol. 3, No. 28

Welcome!

I have the honor of hosting Grand Rounds for the second time! I can't believe it has already been a year since the last time I put all these great medical posts together. Time does indeed fly when you are blogging away.

I thought of many different ways to "spice up" Grand Rounds. After much deliberation, I finally decided to" stick to the basics" and just present "the facts", as I did many times before as a resident during our weekly nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing Urology Grand Rounds.


Editor's choice:

Keith from Digital Doorway writes about the nursing care crisis. It's an eloquent, well-written and wonderfully apropos post about the current nursing shortage, especially in the military healthcare system.

Sunlight Follows Me is written by a physician from the UK, and her story, Dennis Son is my sentimental favorite. I'm a sucker for sad love stories, but what I found most touching is the time taken by the author to talk to her patients.


Life at the Hospital:

Someone who needs no introduction, GruntDoc, has an insightful post about how to call the end of a code. It is empowering and diplomatic at the same time.

Kim, our fearless ER nurse from Emergiblog, with her trademark blend of humor and wistfulness, continues to regale us with moving patient stories in Just this side of elderly.

Susan Palwick, our friendly volunteer ER chaplain from Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good, presents a thought provoking post about the limits of stimulating empathy.

From Medskool , a self-described "naive" medical student, talks about competition for residencies, which takes a look at the comparative competitiveness of matching into various specialties for medical students.

Vitum Medicinus, a Canadian first-year medical student, writes about how his dream-come-true experience of shadowing helicopter paramedics never really left the ground in the thrill of flying with helicopter paramedics. I'm also hoping that his last post is just another April Fool's joke.

Shadowfax from Movin'Meat presents a surefire way to to annoy your anesthesiologist.

The Patients and Health:

Transplant Headquarters is a blog written by a young adult who is the recipient of a kidney transplant. In growing up with a transplant, he talks about the special challenges of pediatric patients who are recipients of organ transplants.

Amy Tenderich from Diabetes Mine discusses her adventures while living with an Omnipod, which, in my humble opinion, is way cooler than an iPod.

In Never That Easy, we find that empathy is sometimes hardest to find amongst your own family, which makes it that much more hurtful.

Rachel from Tales of my thirties, has a humorous job description of herself as a person living with diabetes.

Six Until Me engages in her endless battle with the insurance company , fighting for her right to her diabetic supplies.

Ami Chopine, a self-described "collection of cells that cooperate enough to write" (loved that description!), talks about her thoughts on LASIK horror stories, and how some of these "support groups" hinder rather than help.


Kids, Teens and Health:

The Colorado Health Insurance Insider discusses the debate in Colorado about the HPV vaccine and the "wisdom" of making it a mandatory coverage on health insurance policies.

On a similar thread, InsureBlog discusses whether the new HPV vaccine is a good or bad thing. There is talk that it might actually increase the risks of cervical cancer in younger girls.

Nancy L. Brown, a developmental psychologist from Teen Health 411 discusses some of the key points from a Symposium for Mothers, and introduces this new phase in development coined "adultescence," for ages 20 to 30. (I guess that means I am officially an "adult" sigh....)

Registered dietitian Andrea N. Giancoli from The Family Fork is a nutrition advocate, consultant and educator. Kids and nutrition details one study regarding the number of food ads kids see on TV and a related study connecting TV watching to eating fewer fruits and vegetables.

Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience and contributes to Pure Pedantry, and presents an association between weight gain in pregnancy and later childhood obesity.


Money and Health:

California Medicine Man, an internal medicine professor in Southern California discusses nurse anesthetists making more money than primary care physicians (much to their dismay), and an explanation behind this phenomenon.

Health Business Blog's post titled when socialism is good for capitalism refers to an article in the Los Angeles Times about health insurance becoming more difficult for the self-employed and makes a case that universal coverage would encourage business formation and increase economic growth.

Highlight Health delivers us an inconvenient financial truth about healthcare costs being dangerous for US financial stability. It is sobering article that tries to put in perspective the magnitude of this problem.

Dr. Val Jones discusses P4P. No, no, it's not a new rap group... It's a simple yet comprehensive article about the pitfalls of "Pay for Performance".


Policies, Politics and Health:

Mother Jones from Nurse Ratched wants more doctors in charge in politics. What if there were more healthcare professionals on Capitol Hill? Wouldn't it make for a better world?

Healthline Connects discusses an issue that I may know something about: circumcision and HIV. The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that based on studies in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa, male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually transmitted HIV infection in men by 60%.

Universal Health sees one instance when the dreaded JCAHO can be your friend when solving the all too common problem of "ER boarders".

Health observances touches upon a perennial issue: antibiotics overuse, with reports from new studies from The University of Nebraska.

Hippocrates from Trusted.MD has a tongue-in-cheek article about jumping on the Health 2.0 bandwagon. Please keep in mind that April 1st was just around the corner....


Education and Health:

Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments has and excellent and comprehensive article on the politics and the pitfalls of diagnosing clients with eating disorders .

Just in time for summer, Dr Paul Auerbach from Medicine for the Outdoors gives us really sound and simple steps in drowning prevention, which may save lives.

Dr Deborah Serani highlights research regarding anxiety disorders which talks about the importance of early diagnosis and prevention of this very common disorder.

Dr Palter from Doc in the Machine (a blog aiming at transforming medicine with tomorrow’s technology) discusses "Evil Tech", about how some people believe that some technologies are inherently good or evil - especially developments in medicine and the military.

Bertalan Meskó from ScienceRoll, a medical student at the University of Debrecen in Hungary gives us an extensive listing of Medical wikis and asserts that they are here to stay and will likely play an important role in medical education.

The medical wiki topic strikes again in Clinical Cases and Images.

Dr. Joshua Schwimmer is a nephrologist practicing in New York City and is the brains behind Tech Medicine. He talks about a little known syndrome that I will henceforth name the phobia-of-automatic BP machine induced hypertension , or PABPMIH for short. Catchy, no?

Dr. Emer from Parallel Universe discusses an exciting and novel solution to the blood shortage problem, based on recent discoveries by Danish scientists to convert all blood to type O. Can this be a dream come true for all level I Trauma Centers and klutzy surgeons?

Grandma may cook some awesome cookies, but listen to The Fitness Fixer when it comes to fitness advice. Dr. Jolie Bookspan debunks a few fitness myths.

On the same vein, Kevin, M.D. has a real issues with Dr. Nancy Snyderman who is NBC's Chief Medical Editor, and her non-evidence based cancer screening guidelines.

Dr Domenico Savatta from Robotic Surgery Blog, a fellow urologist who specializes in robotic surgery (the wave of the future!) discusses a technique to deliver the median lobe of the prostate during a robotic prostatectomy. He also has an interesting link to the Cancer Blog about an internet and medicine survey.

Dr Lisa Marcucci from Inside Surgery teaches us the step by step procedure involved in a tubal ligation via a laparoscopic Silastic Band.


Category all of its own and Health:

A second year medical student from Over My Med Body! sent me his link most decidedly after the deadline, but he did made me laugh, and I thought it was a good way to end Grand Rounds. So here it is: Product(MEDRED) . (My personal favorite is the last one...)


And that's a wrap.

Please stay tuned for Grand Rounds next week hosted by the incomparable Dr. Dork, one of my favorite medical bloggers. He is funny, charming, cute (if one can trust the picture on his blog), speaks with an Australian accent (I can only assume), with his most endearing trait being that he talks about himself in the third person.

Finally, as always, I MUST thank Dr. Nick Genes from Blogborygmi for his tireless efforts at keeping this grand tradition alive!