Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
An article appeared in yesterday’s NYT Magazine on the hazards of over-confidence. The Israeli-born psychologist (and epistemologist, I’d dare say), Nobel laureate and author Daniel Kahneman considers how people make decisions based on bits of information that don’t provide an adequate representation of the subject at hand. He recounts how poorly, and firmly, army officers evaluate […]
Last week a video came my way via ZDoggMD, a popular blog by doctors who are not me. The Office Med School Edition — The clip is a parody of The Office about Problem Based Learning (PBL). In a typical PBL, the students meet regularly in small groups. On Monday they begin with clinical aspects of a case. The […]
In the city where I live, it’s hard to buy a muffin at a Starbucks without stepping back from the counter and reconsidering. Swallowing 460 calories for a minimal-nutrient breakfast seems foolish. So I eat fewer muffins than I used to. The posted nutritional tidbits, however imprecise, on the contents of pieces of quiche, slices of […]
An article caught my attention in the September AARP Bulletin: The Caregiver’s Dilemma considers the 61.6 million people in the U.S. who care for older relatives or friends. People with jobs are, understandably, unsure if they should let their boss or supervisor know they’re caring for someone who’s sick. This indirect cost of illness and […]
Well, it’s the day after Labor Day, time to resume our discussion of Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care. We’ve reached the end of the list, on ideas to reduce oncology costs put forth by Drs. Smith and Hillner in the May 25 issue of the NEJM. Really this 10th and final point intended for […]
The other day, over lunch, I was reading the Sept 2011 issue of the Atlantic and came upon this image on p. 37. According to the not-so-fine print, this full-page broccoli fix is sponsored by MARS chocolate, North America, website listed: www.marshealthyliving.com So we can find out about nutrition from the company that manufactures M&M’s, Snickers, Twix, MilkyWay […]
ML learned a new word on Twitter last week: cybrarian: “a person whose job is to find, collect, and manage information that is available on the World Wide Web” My source is the on-line, ever-handy Merriam-Webster dictionary. (H/T to Dave deBronkart, who sent the term flying across cyberspace.) —– Related Posts:Twitter, The Notificator, and Old Social […]
Today’s word comes from Nature News that the NIH is dropping a proposed requirement for universities to disclose researchers’ financial ties to industry on websites. This is a loss for patients, who may not be aware of their doctors’ relationships with pharmaceutical companies and others who fund clinical trials, fellowships, conference junkets and other perks […]
On the local, national and nutritional fronts: How refreshing, in this heat, that Fairway opened a new store on East 86th Street yesterday. Coincidently, Michelle Obama’s push to eliminate “food deserts” – places where it’s hard to find affordable fresh produce and other healthy foods – was highlighted this week when several big retailers signed […]
The latest NEJM features a big story about a small trial, with only 39 patients in the end, on the potential for placebos to relieve patients’ experience of symptoms. This follows other recent reports on the subjective effectiveness of pseudo-pharmacology. My point for today is that placebos are problematic in health care with few exceptions. First, […]
This week the Times ran a leading story on a new med school admission process, with multiple, mini-interviews, like speed dating. The idea is to assess applicants’ social, communication and ethical thinking (?) skills: …It is called the multiple mini interview, or M.M.I., and its use is spreading. At least eight medical schools in the United […]
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care, by Drs. Thomas J. Smith and Bruce E. Hillner, in a recent NEJM health policy piece. The authors’ third suggestion: to limit chemotherapy to patients with good performance status, with an exception for highly responsive disease, is surely one of the most […]
This week the FDA approved a new assay for Her2 expression in breast cancer biopsies. The technology, Inform Dual ISH, is manufactured by Ventana Medical Systems, a Roche subsidiary. Inform Dual ISH works like this: technicians, typically working under the supervision of a pathologist, expose a tiny bit of a breast biopsy specimen, fixed on […]
This morning I noticed we had too many blueberries in the fridge. So while my husband went out for a run, I opened the windows wide (to cool the apartment), turned on the oven and made some fresh breakfast food. It had been two decades or so since I’d baked anything like these. My recollection, […]
A note on cooking with leeks, inspired by a NYT Well post with a list of related Recipes for Health: I use leeks all the time, as my neighbors are probably too aware. I use leeks sautéed in olive oil as filler, mixed with an egg and flour for a tart, or to season simple […]
CBS News has posted a gripping set of images, mostly of cancer patients, dating to the 1880s. The photos from the Burns Archive are graphic, as much as they’re telling, instructive and rare. This photograph, taken in New York City in 1886, is one of the earliest ever taken of breast surgery. Surgeons had […]
The two-letter acronym specifies a molecule, or antigen, usually on a cell’s surface…
Yesterday I wrote on some tough decisions facing a TV show‘s protagonist. She’s got metastatic melanoma and might participate in a clinical trial when the show resumes. Now imagine you’re an oncologist, or a real patient with this killing disease – you really need to be on top of new developments, to understand the pros […]
In my inbox this morning, via ASCO‘s “Cancer in the News” feed: The UK’s Telegraph (5/6, Beckford) reported that as “many as 20,000 British women could avoid developing” breast cancer “each year, if they took more exercise, drank less and ate better.” Latest figures “suggest that 47,600 women developed breast cancer in 2008,” and the […]
This post, on my research in cancer immunology, is strangely personal. At one level, what follows is nothing more than a list, a narrative if you will, a sketch of a formative chunk of my career and personal history. I’ve wanted to put this out there (here) for quite a while, but couldn’t: It’s been […]
