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Patient Safety and the Culture of Cover-Up

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An interesting article was written by George Lundberg titled “A culture of cover-up has slowed the patient safety movement” on December 1, 2012, on KevinMd.com located at http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/12/culture-coverup-slowed-patient-safety-movement.html. In the article Dr. Lundberg says “Promoting patient safety, preventing medical error, preventing physician error, preventing errors in diagnosis, preventing nurse error, preventing surgical error, preventing communication error, preventing health illiteracy error, preventing errors from language barriers, preventing laboratory error, preventing computer error, preventing patient mix-ups, preventing right and left side of body mix-ups, preventing mistakes, since mistakes are the stepping stones to failure. Recognizing human frailty, recognizing physician humanity, recognizing system fallibility, owning up to problems, eliminating cover-up, acting out professionalism, recognizing that professionalism means self governance, individually and as groups. Self criticism, peer criticism, a culture of peer review, honesty, truth, disclosure, fairness, and negotiated settlements. Objective evaluation and commitment … Read more

Retractions and Corrections From Scientific Misconduct

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An interesting article appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics, January 2013, vol. 39, pp. 46-50, titled “Scientific retractions and corrections related to misconduct findings,” by David B Resnik and Gregg E Dinse. The authors explored 208 closed cases involving official findings of research misconduct published by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity from 1992 to 2011 in order to determine how often scientists mention in a retraction or correction notice that there was an ethical problem with the article. The issue of fraudulent articles appear in the scientific literature is a problem as many articles and the data within them can be falsified. See for example Industry Bias in Biomedical Science and The Right to Health and Information. The authors mention that typically when a retraction or correction is made to an article they are usually electronically linked to … Read more

Do Physicians Have a Responsibility to Meet the Health Care Needs of Society?

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An interesting article appears in the Fall 2012 issue of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics by Allan S. Brett titled “Physicians Have a Responsibility to Meet the Health Care Needs of Society.” Allan opens the article by addressing a question that was posed to Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election by Wolf Blizter which I mentioned before on this post https://blog.teethremoval.com/dumb-americans-trust-their-doctors-for-no-valid-reason/. Allan aruged that Ron Paul agreed with the sentiment that “physicians have a responsibility to meet the health care needs of society.” In the article Allan makes the following case. “In the rest of this essay, I first demonstrate that society is already organized— at least in part — to rescue sick people regardless of ability to pay, and that society is not prepared to abandon that general guiding principle. It follows that physicians — … Read more

Dietary Goals of the United States

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I have previously written about  Dr. McDougall through finding his newsletter in a Google Search where he discussed how to protect yourself from abusive doctors. See https://blog.teethremoval.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-abusive-doctors/. Earlier this year I also discussed in a post some of Dr. McDougalls thought’s on Food, Children, and Diet where he wrote to governor Rick Scott of Florida claiming that various food industries are engaged in child abuse. In his newsletter from October 2012, he discussed former democratic senator George McGovern and his McGovern report from 1977 where guideline for eating were developed, http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm. Dr. McDougall says that the McGovern report says “…there is a great deal of evidence and it continues to accumulate, which strongly implicates and, in some instances, proves that the major causes of death and disability in the United States are related to the diet we eat…What are the … Read more

How to Determine If a Clinical Practice Guideline is Trustworthy

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An interesting article titled “How to Decide Whether a Clinical Practice Guideline Is Trustworthy,” written by David F. Ransohoff, MD Michael Pignone, MD, MPH, and Harold C. Sox, MD appears in JAMA, January 9, 2013,Vol 309, No. 2, pp. 139 -140. The article mentions how many controversies have arose recently over cancer screening guidelines. The article mentions how in 2008 Congress gave the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies with developing standards for objective, scientifically valid, and consistent approaches to developing practice guidelines. Well as I mentioned in this blog post Tips to Prevent Medical Errors – AHRQ Congress actually gave the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) in 1989 evidence-based, clinical-practice guidelines. However, the medical device industry and several doctors organizations opposed this as it was threatening to limit their profits and found a sympathetic ear … Read more