When patients present with symptoms of pet-related diseases, you may not at first connect their clinical features of infection or allergy with their pet — be it cat, dog, bird, or something more exotic. But it is important to know the signs of disease that may point to [...]
What is the role of aspirin in primary prevention — preventing the first cardiovascular event in our patients? This has been an area of changing recommendations leading to considerable uncertainty among practitioners. Aspirin is an effective antiplatelet agent that acts by inhibiting cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) which leads to reduced [...]
What is Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME)? Think flexible, lifelong learning, with knowledge and/or skills assessed throughout a continuum of learning. In a competency-based educational program, you don’t just acquire knowledge and then spit it back at the time of a final exam. Instead, the method of assessment is [...]
Editor’s Note: This post was previously published in Insights on Residency Training, which is hosted by NEJM Journal Watch. Kashif Shaikh, MD, is the 2016-17 Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. We all start with medical school I [...]
Starting July 1, 2017, the ACGME duty hour requirements will be tweaked. Interns will be allowed to work a full 24-hour shift — up from 16 hours — followed by up to 4 hours for activities related to patient safety, education, and effective transitions. This follows their senior [...]
There is a thick stack of visiting nurse reports piled in a physician’s inbox. He skims through the officious, dense documents, vaguely recognizes most of the patients, and signs his name attesting to their veracity. Later, a patient calls after hours. Apparently, there was a drug-drug interaction with [...]