Perspectives from Doctors, Patients, Policymakers
Q: How do you know anonymous posts can harm physicians’ reputations?
A: We know that physician review sites are as likely to misinform as they are to inform. If a patient complains his wound opened two days after an operation, how do we know the patient followed instructions not to lift heavy objects?
John Nance: A Flight Plan for Hospitals
An author and seasoned pilot talks about what aviation can teach hospitals about safety.
My Body, Myself
Deciding to keep her medical condition a secret from her parents becomes a declaration of independence for one woman.
Shock Value
Art and message merged in twentieth-century posters, raising the alarm about contagions from TB to AIDS.
Message from the MGH
Peter L. Slavin and David F. Torchiana, the MGH’s president and CEO, mull the merits of evidence-based medicine.
Second Opinion
Proto readers opine on Biopolis’s downside, the value of medical homes, and making CPR count.
Radioactive Me
For one mother, getting her thyroid under control could also mean forgoing a second child.
The Literary Physician
Columbia University’s Rita Charon discusses how narrative skills can create better physicians.
Message from the MGH
Peter L. Slavin and David F. Torchiana sound off on the potential of health care reform.
Second Opinion
Readers share their take on criticizing physicians, genetic testing and cancer’s deadly spread.
In 1849, a student who “could not bear the sight of a medical book” and who complained that “the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust” graduated from medical school to become the world’s first female physician.
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Tune in to Proto: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Medicine on ReachMD. Host Dr. Bruce Bloom interviews Mass General experts about evidence-based medicine, hormone therapy and more.
“Since the guts were the first parts to putrefy, the students would begin by slitting open the abdomen, folding back the flaps of skin and fat, and examining the organs of digestion: the stomach, the more than 30 feet of intestines and the smaller organs, such as the spleen, gallbladder and pancreas, packed tightly into the abdominal cavity. Next, they would open the chest, sawing apart the rib cage to expose and remove the lungs, the lobes of which were blackened by London’s ubiquitous winter smogs...”
