Danielle Ofri, The New York Times

Every doctor I know has been complaining about the growing burden of electronic busywork generated by the E.M.R., the electronic medical record. And it’s not just in our imaginations.

The hard data have been rolling in now at a steady pace. A recent study in the Annals of Family Medicine used the E.M.R. to examine the work of 142 family medicine physicians over three years. These doctors spent more than half of their time — six hours of their average 11-hour day — on the E.M.R., of which nearly an hour and a half took place after the clinic closed.

Another study, in Health Affairs, tracked the activities of 471 primary care doctors over a three-year period, and also found that E.M.R. time edged out face-to-face time with patients. full articles

Andrea Petersen, The Wall Street Journal

In a time when almost everyone shares almost everything, the question of boundaries between a doctor and patient is thornier than ever.

Beyond the obvious no-go areas of sex and abuse, the relationship can be fraught. How do you reply to the chatty doctor who name-drops other patients—including your co-workers? Can you invite your dermatologist to dinner?

Doctors are divided on how strict the boundaries should be. Some have firm rules against socializing with patients or revealing personal details about their own lives. Others say a closer relationship can build trust and make it more likely patients will follow medical advice. The growth of social media complicates things, too, especially as a generational shift means young digital natives are entering the medical profession. full article

Atul Gawande, The New Yorker

By 2010, Bill Haynes had spent almost four decades under attack from the inside of his skull. He was fifty-seven years old, and he suffered from severe migraines that felt as if a drill were working behind his eyes, across his forehead, and down the back of his head and neck. They left him nauseated, causing him to vomit every half hour for up to eighteen hours. He’d spend a day and a half in bed, and then another day stumbling through sentences. The pain would gradually subside, but often not entirely. And after a few days a new attack would begin.

Haynes (I’ve changed his name, at his request) had his first migraine at the age of nineteen. It came on suddenly, while he was driving. He pulled over, opened the door, and threw up in someone’s yard. At first, the attacks were infrequent and lasted only a few hours. But by the time he was thirty, married, and working in construction management in London, where his family was from, they were coming weekly, usually on the weekends. A few years later, he began to get the attacks at work as well. full article

Fox News Health

They’re creating Word Clouds – and they say the practice is valuable for them, too, because it helps them forge their own bonds with patients.

Staff members in the ICU of St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, Ontario say the process is an economical way to alleviate a stressful time. They have incorporated Word Cloud creation into regular practice and recently studied its impact.

“It was surprisingly meaningful,” said Dr. Meredith Vanstone, an assistant professor of family medicine at McMaster University. She and her colleagues interviewed 37 relatives and 73 healthcare providers of 42 dying patients who were Word Cloud subjects. continua a leggere