Some of us can still remember the family doctor's coming to our home with a little black bag and curing us with compassion, personal contact and concern, and probably a shot of penicillin. Those days are long gone, with changes affecting clinical practice that include new payment and delivery approaches, electronic health records, patient portals, and publicly reported quality metrics.
Changes to modern medicine brin...
Why is it still on the market? Consumer Reports asked this very important question when reporting the findings of its investigation of dozens of infant deaths related to Fisher-Price’s Rock ‘n Play sleeper.
On April 5, after Consumer Reports asked for comment about their then-ongoing investigation, the federal government and Fisher-Price issued only a warning about the sleep device, which was both designed and ma...
Despite endless back-to-school sales and Halloween displays, summer isn’t over. That’s good news for the crowd that enjoys being able to indulge in balmy August days and temperate September evenings. It’s also a reminder to everyone to remain vigilant about seasonal accidental deaths.
According to the National Safety Council (NSC), accidental deaths peak during the warmest months of the year. (In other words, now....
Dr. Vinita Parkash, professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine, recently wrote a commentary featured in WBUR-Boston’s opinion section, Cognoscenti. In the commentary, she recalls a mistake she made earlier in her career: She failed to identify cancer cells when examining a tissue sample from a 42-year-old woman. That woman later died of cancer.
Parkash notes that diagnostic errors receive less attention than oth...
In Philadelphia, tourists can take a sightseeing trip aboard an oddly shaped amphibious vehicle called a Duck. Ride The Ducks has locations in Philly, three other cities, and Guam, and other similar Duck tour companies are located throughout the United States. Some people wonder, though, whether these vehicles should be permanently placed in dry dock.
In May, a Ride the Ducks vehicle fatally struck a pedestrian in Philadelp...