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A Doctor's Practical Guide to Prescription Drugs
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2011 Comment (1)When I was in residency training, one of my more challenging patients was a woman in her sixties who ended up in the hospital again and again with complications from heart failure and diabetes. I and her other physicians prescribed a dozen powerful medications to keep her conditions under control, but nothing seemed to work. Her blood sugar level was always too high or too low, and, despite our repeated instructions and reminders, it wasn't clear that she understood what each of her medications was for or how to take them on schedule.
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A Quick Guide to Finding Good, Healthy Recipes Online
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2011 Comment (1)It’s National Nutrition Month, and the American Dietetic Association is encouraging people to consult dieticians and other health professionals about making good food choices. Friends often assume that as a family doctor, I must know a lot about nutrition. And it's true that during my training, I spent countless hours memorizing the complex chemistry that allows the human body to turn sugar into energy; calculating the content of intravenous solutions for dehydrated children; and giving patients who had lost the ability to swallow liquid nutrition via feeding tubes. But this esoteric knowledge doesn't make me an expert on designing healthy meals for families. In fact, a survey published last year in the journal Academic Medicine reported that on average, U.S. medical schools provide fewer than 20 hours of nutrition education, even less than when I graduated in 2001.
