For the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose kidneys have stopped functioning, there are two options: lifelong dialysis or kidney transplantation. Dialysis is time consuming, carries serious risks, and only partially replaces the functions of a healthy kidney. Patients live longer and have a much better quality of life after receiving a kidney transplant. The difficulty with transplantation is that donated organs are scarce and transplants are more likely to be successful with living dono...
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Got Safety?
My bachelor’s degree is in engineering. (I hear all of you thinking “Ah! No wonder he’s such a geek.” But I was a geek long before that.) In engineering, safety is an entire field of study with formal ways to account for and measure errors, plan for system failures, and quantify the likelihood of adverse outcomes.
Until the last several years, medicine had a very different culture. Traditionally giving a lot of latitude to physician judgment and autonomy, hospitals had few systems in place...
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So Long and Thanks for all the Swag
On January 1 the pharmaceutical industry started imposing on itself a ban against the branded gifts to doctors that have been a constant companion of pharmaceutical sales representatives. The Post-It notes, pens and coffee mugs bearing the brand names of various medications are gone. The paperweights and staplers and occasional plush toys with names of prescription antacids and antidepressants and blood pressure medicines will fade into extinction or become collectors’ items.
Last week’s ...
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