by Ryan Winter on February 3, 2010
More than making house calls and being there for patients, the following doctors spent the last year coming up with discoveries, techniques, treatments, and tales of bravery that changed the lives of the people under their watch and those under the care of many of their colleagues.
From coming up with a faster way to get more organs to transplant recipients to finding less painful ways of administering chemotherapy, these doctors contributions have touched their patients and thousands more they will never meet: [continue reading…]
by Ryan Winter on January 13, 2010
More than anything else, people who pray, pray for good health. But are religion and spirituality relevant to treatment? If so, do they have a positive or negative effect?
A recent study published in the November 2009 issue of the journal Social Problems suggested that religion can be both a bridge and a barrier when it comes to medical treatment. (source)
According to the study, for every case where religion was a barrier (i.e. religious belief prevented consent for a proven treatment), there was another instance where it was a bridge – for example, a case where the family of a terminally-ill child could suggest answers where medicine couldn’t.
Another study, this one by Zogby International, suggested that born-again Christians were 14% less likely to get the H1N1 vaccination than people who did not identify themselves as such. (source)
Can religion make you healthy?
So does being religious help or hinder your health?
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by Jennifer Bradford on January 7, 2010
I love my local pharmacy; I even like the big chain pharmacy for some things. One thing I’ve recently learned is that not all of the people behind the pharmacy counter are pharmacists. Heck, not even most of them, apparently.
In the pharmacy I frequent, there are usually two pharmacy technicians and one pharmacist there at the same time. During slower hours, there may only be one technician, but there is at least one at all times. I had previously assumed that there was the pharmacist, who put the medications in the bottles, and the other people who stocked shelves or worked as cashiers. It’s amazing the kinds of misconceptions you can have, and how completely wrong they can be.
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by Ryan Winter on December 22, 2009
While 20% of Americans live in rural areas, only 9% of America’s doctors practice there. Oddly enough though, patients of urban physicians often have longer wait-times.
So which medical environment is better? Rural or urban?
Though there’s an urge to discover whether people in cities or the countryside have it better when it comes to access to medical professionals, statistical differences between states and the way people in both areas use healthcare make a definitive winner-loser comparison impossible.
What we can do is look at a few telling aspects of how rural medical care compares to that of cities: [continue reading…]
by Jennifer Bradford on December 15, 2009
Listening to my radio on the way to the grocery store, I heard an advertisement for flu shots being given at one of the local pharmacy clinics. The ad talked about the importance of getting the seasonal flu shot and described who should get the H1N1 flu shot. The hours were listed, and a special point was made of how the shots, and clinic, were available every day. At first I thought how convenient it would be not to have to make a doctor’s appointment and be able to go in on the weekend. Then I started wondering about how my regular doctor would get records from this clinic and who would be providing the shots, or any medical advice, were I to go in for another reason.
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by Ryan Winter on December 1, 2009
The days of Star Trek’s medical tricorder coming into reality are years-past: In many respects, you can pick up such a device at any mobile phone retailer…
Just download the following programs to your iPhone (or, in many cases, your Palm or Blackberry) and you’ve got a powerful, well-rounded digital-utility-belt for fighting any number of health conditions…
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