Since the past week or so, Ontarians are dangerously close to completely running out of the most commonly used injectable medications. Translation? The elective surgery you have been waiting for probably won’t happen. Your relative who is suffering from metastatic cancer may not get the relief he/she needs from intractable nausea and vomiting. Your young child infected with a life-threatening bacteria could potentially not get the most effective antibiotic and instead receive a …
Choosing the right pill.
In the movie the Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo a choice: either take the red pill, or the blue pill. What Neo never considered, was that perhaps he shouldn’t take any pills. In a bid to combat the exploding epidemic of narcotic abuse and addiction, the government recently chose to stop public funding for OxyContin and instead opted to fund a new alternative called, coincidentally enough, OxyNEO. The theory sold by the drug company …
Social Media – Potential in Medicine?
It was my first ER shift in charge of the Resuscitation area. Needless to say, my adrenaline and nerves were firing like crazy; being responsible for the sickest of the sick that rolls through our doors is a daunting task, especially since we were the local trauma center. The shift was going relatively well, and with only a few hours left I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. BBEEEEPPP. There is …
Drummond’s musings.
We have a fixed “X” amount of money and resources. We want the best care for everyone. And we want it forever. If I presented this basic problem to a class of 5th graders, I can already picture them scratching their heads. “Excuse me sir,” one of them would raise his/her hand and say, “but that doesn’t add up – it’s not possible.”
The biggest unspoken secret.
Doctors commit errors. It’s not spoken about openly, and every single patient would like to believe that his/her care will be perfect in its execution, every single time. Yet deep down we all know the ugly truth: physicians are human beings, and are guaranteed to make mistakes.