Wednesday, April 20, 2011

If your doctor is praying to heal you...

... you haven't got long to live (or you should find another doctor). Time to add to the list of science journals that have little regard for science. Here's a presidential address published in the American Journal of Surgery entitled "Can prayer help surgery." Unfortunately, the answer is "yes" (or more like, "No, but I'll say yes anyway"). Despite the fact that the author acknowledges that there is no scientific evidence that prayer works, he decides to add the old religious line of "What if those results are the will of God?" Really? Hell, I should have just responded to all the tough questions I got from reviewers by saying "It's the will of God. Who are you to question it?" This presidential address makes a mockery of science. The field of surgery is already decades behind the rest of medicine and Dr. Schroeder of St. John Hospital in Detroit (along with the American Journal of Surgery) just sent it back a couple of centuries. (uggh, I'll be working in a Catholic hospital next year, hopefully I don't run into these types)

Once again, I have to say that if any physician claims that their successfully treating a patient was God's doing, they should give up their salary.

Gotta bring back the Jesus surgeon picture. It makes me wonder why a surgery residency is 5 years. It must take that long to not get creeped out by Jesus giving you a shoulder message while helping you with surgery.

(PZ Myers has a better evisceration of the address and Orac discusses how ethically and scientifically inappropriate it is).

Friday, April 15, 2011

Stupider than I thought

I already mentioned how Arizona sucks... but this new bill (that was just passed) that requires presidential hopefuls to "prove" their US Citizenship to get on the state ballot is incredibly stupid. Accepted forms of proof includes a "long-form" birth certificate (because Hawaii only releases the short-form to the millions of nuts that have been asking for it) or, get this, at least two other forms of accepted proof such as early baptismal certificate or circumcision certificate. Are you serious? Some shady religious nut can forge those in a second. I keep on thinking this country can't sink any lower, but I get proven wrong over and over again. Let's hope that the next piece of legislation doesn't do away with the whole birth certificate thing and instead require a baptismal certificate.

Translation: A black man with a funny-sounding name couldn't possibly be an American.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

House of God

With my time off, I recently started rereading Samuel Shem's House of God (must read for any medical type that hasn't read it yet). A novel about an intern learning the truth about how things work in the hospital. It has a lot of dark humor in it, but there's a lot that (even as a med student), I could tell is based on a grain of truth. For example, the type of patients you see at the hospital. You'd think that they'd be a cross-section of the population, but they aren't. I assume it's because those with repeat hospitalizations aren't exactly your average Joes. Upon meeting the patient who hides under the covers whenever his discharge is discussed or the patient that wants to keep his rectal tube in because he's too lazy to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, I was immediately reminded of the characters in the book. I wouldn't like to get to the point where I think about my patients as GOMERS or follow the Fat Man's Laws, but at least some of my experiences with medicine so far say that I may have to face days where it'll get close.

Here are the Fat Man's Laws (courtesy of Wikipedia):

  1. GOMERS DON’T DIE.
  2. GOMERS GO TO GROUND.
  3. AT A CARDIAC ARREST, THE FIRST PROCEDURE IS TO TAKE YOUR OWN PULSE.
  4. THE PATIENT IS THE ONE WITH THE DISEASE.
  5. PLACEMENT COMES FIRST.
  6. THERE IS NO BODY CAVITY THAT CANNOT BE REACHED WITH A #14G NEEDLE AND A GOOD STRONG ARM.
  7. AGE + BUN = LASIX DOSE.
  8. THEY CAN ALWAYS HURT YOU MORE.
  9. THE ONLY GOOD ADMISSION IS A DEAD ADMISSION.
  10. IF YOU DON’T TAKE A TEMPERATURE, YOU CAN’T FIND A FEVER.
  11. SHOW ME A BMS (Best Medical Student, a student at the Best Medical School) WHO ONLY TRIPLES MY WORK AND I WILL KISS HIS FEET.
  12. IF THE RADIOLOGY RESIDENT AND THE MEDICAL STUDENT BOTH SEE A LESION ON THE CHEST X-RAY, THERE CAN BE NO LESION THERE.
  13. THE DELIVERY OF GOOD MEDICAL CARE IS TO DO AS MUCH NOTHING AS POSSIBLE.
I would really like to think that #12 isn't true.