My Valentine’s Day plans include:

• Going to the DMV.
• Going to the dentist.

Not much love at either place.

The end may include drinking with my other single friends, which would clearly be the bright spot.

Carry on.

6 Comments »

While I’m proud to say that we ban pharmaceutical gifts , it appears the drug reps have started to go after medical students, as evidenced by the hallway outside the library:



Okay, yes, it’s the caffeine drug reps, and it’s not free, but I predict that vending machine will get plenty of business. (If you don’t know what those drinks are, they’re “Energy” drinks full of caffeine and sugar, like Red Bull.)

Comments Off on Drug Reps Invade Medical School

While a somewhat amusing look at med student clerkships like Medicine , Pediatrics , and Ob-Gyn , I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t say that I felt like Panda took the wrong approach to clinics.

Maybe it’s just different med school cultures, but he mostly starts out each one essentially saying the med student doesn’t matter, and isn’t really important to the team. If you don’t feel like you’re a valued member of the team, prove to your attendings that you are . Ask questions, take an active role, challenge yourself, ask for more responsibility, and most of the time, you will be rewarded. I was treated like an intern during my Medicine, Peds, Psych, and ER months. I had my own patients, and my attendings and residents pretty much let me manage my patients myself (with their oversight, of course). I wrote the H&Ps, daily notes, and discharge summaries. On my inpatient Peds month when I was on call, it was just me and the attending in-house! We managed the entire floor and PICU together ourselves. Did I do anything the attending couldn’t have done him or herself? Of course not. But I wrote orders, responded to questions from nurses, and got called throughout the night for admissions and procedures (again, with attending oversight). The medical student knows the patient better than anyone else on the team , and often I was able to provide medical history or dispo information that no one else on the team knew. Are you saving peoples’ lives? Often, no, but you’re learning how to, and if you don’t feel like you’re contributing to the team, you’re missing the experience.

Note: if month after month you’re having plenty of “slacking potential,” complain. Maybe it’s just me or my teams, but more often than not I was busy almost all the time–if not with patient care activities, note-writing, order-writing, etc, then with didactics or classes. Call me goodie two-shoes, that’s fine, but I’ve always preferred to work my butt off during clerkships and really try to learn a lot now than when I’ve got the MD after my name and people expect me to know stuff.

So an overall thank you to my programs and attendings and teams–I’d hate to be the exception! Make yourself matter, you’re paying for it dearly!

6 Comments »

First her son, now her , found unresponsive in her hotel room. Overdose?

Comments Off on Anna Nicole Dead at 39

You’d think “unnamed Arizona treatment center” would want all the publicity it could get–after 3 years of crystal meth and gay sex with a male prostitute, Ted Haggard is now cured of his sexual deviance ! In only 3 weeks! Wow!

I had no idea that gay people are just “acting out.” Thanks, Teddy!

(I feel really bad for his poor, poor wife, who likely has known the truth for a long time, and his poor children–having to publicly swallow the lie that daddy was just a sex addict, but now he’s cured.)

2 Comments »

One of the great myths of Canada says that doctors are leaving in record numbers because of their terrible health system. It simply isn’t true, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information : (I’m essentially quoting Don McCanne’s Quote of the Day here, a great listserv that if you’re not on, you’re missing):

Over the past five years, the proportion of Canadian physicians moving in and out of the country has decreased by 30.6%. While both the number leaving and the number returning to the country are on the decline, Canada has seen a larger decrease in the number of physicians leaving the country. As a result, the proportion of physicians returning to the country is now greater than the
proportion leaving.

When comparing the number of physicians moving abroad to the number of physicians returning from abroad, Canada registered net physician losses from 2001 to 2003. Starting in 2004, Canada began registering net gains of 85 physicians in 2004 and 61 physicians in 2005 due to
international migration.

4 Comments »

… are mostly due to inability to show benefit greater than placebo or current therapies . Yikes.

Comments Off on Recent Pharma Failures