Stop Paging Me - The Online Housestaff Community

Say what you want about Dancing With the Stars. Go ahead and mock that Flavor Flav show and the inane lives of teenage rich kids as seen on MTV's The Hills. But don't you dare include any of those shows in the same breath as The Biggest Loser, possibly the most important show to hit primetime in the past 50 years.

Reality programming has become TV's version of crack. It's easy to make and equally addictive. Put a bunch of camera hogs with personality disorders together in the same house and watch the entertainment ensue. Just imagine if you could use the dependency for good rather than evil - that's right, healthy crack.

Getting Closer to an e-Solution

You can use a computer to book a flight, make a stock trade, buy a dress, price insurance quotes, and yet we still document patients' critical medical findings and treatments on a scribbled, hand-written progress note that may or may not be legible.

Worse yet is the process of recovering those notes if the patient returns several days later during the middle of the night. It is virtually impossible to see what was done during the course of admission if you are dependent on the old chart. And if they were at the hospital 4 miles down the road? Forget about it. Every single test they had performed might as well have been in Lebanon since the vast majority of hospitals never share information with each other and most patients do not carry copies of all their imaging and blood results with them. But change may be near...

A Wii We Go!

Attention gamers: You can now buy a Wii for your medical office or resident lounge and write it off as a business expense. Our medical colleagues in Chicago have figured out a way to make the latest gaming sensation, the Nintendo Wii, into a viable medical asset. Check it out.

Read the whole article by AP medical writer Lindsey Tanner below

Surgical Resident in Hot Water Over Groin Shot

A chief surgical resident at Mayo Clinc Scottsdale faced a disciplinary hearing for allegedly snapping a pic of his patient's tattooed johnson and showing the picture to fellow doctors. The pic was taken while the surgeon was scrubbed for a gall bladder.

Website of the Week: PosterSession.com

StopPagingMe.com has always been on the lookout for great websites that make residents' lives a little easier. In today's competitive subspecialty training enviroment, publishing and/or presenting at a conference is becoming a must if you want to fill one of those top fellowship spots.

If you're at the Mayo Clinic, you probably have a staff of poster-makers at the ready to make your abstract look beautiful. But if you were like us, you trained at a smaller institution and had to fend for yourself. Kinko's is expensive and often unreliable and local photo shops usually have no idea how to make a scientific abstract pop. Finally, we found a company that will make your poster quickly, affordably and beautifully. POSTERSESSIONS.COM has been there for us on several occasions over the past 2 years and we wanted to pay them a compliment.

UpToDate: The New Gold Standard

There are almost as many medical references out there as there are medicines. No one is photocopying the most recent review article on anything anymore. The information now comes fast and furious via ultra-condensed pocket reference books, online medical references (e..g MDConsult, e-Medicine, WebMD, etc), PDAs, or at the very least, an online journal. Medical students and residents now walk the floors with a virtual library in their white coat. But which ones are the best? Some are super pricey and we want to help you choose where your money is best spent.

Pay attention to our rating system in which we judge the price ($-cheap, $$$$-expensive); the Cost-benefit ratio, Resale potential, and finally, Portability of each resource.

If you have a medical resource that you would like to rate, please follow our example by providing a brief description followed by the numerical values and send it to webmaster@stoppagingme.com!

Organ Vendors

In Lahore, Pakistan yesterday, 6 people were arrested, including 3 doctors and the owner of a private hospital, after authorities identified them as key participants in an illegal kidney transplant "ring"? Can we even call it a "ring"? I'm not sure what one would call that.

Authorities in eastern Pakistan said that many men, like the ones seen here with healing nephrectomy scars, are selling their kidneys on the black market for about $1000 to pay off debts.

StopPagingMe's Kick in the RSS

Bush: A Champion of Inhibiting Science

He did it before and he'll do it again. Ask out President for anything and he will say 'yes'. But ask him to allow federal spending on the hottest field in scientific research and he will dust that veto card off quicker than you can say 'Christian Right.'

For only the second time in his two terms, Dubya is poised to block a Senate-supported bill that would lighten up on embryonic stem cell research restrictions.

StopPagingMe.com's Clip of the Week

Check out this clip from the folks at Acceptable TV. Their parody, Medical Hospital, wins it for us.

Best line? "His gunshot wound is bleeding, I need 20 CC's of medicine!"

http://acceptable.tv/videos/770-Medical-Hospital

The Real March Madness

Forget bracketology and Dickie V's Final Four-cast - this madness is for real. Real jobs, real patients, real pain and suffering in the near future as the dreaded internship year begins to come into focus.

Monday, March 19th was a huge day for more than 20,000 medical students across the U.S. These future physicians learned at which hospitals around the United States they would be tortured for the next 3 to 8 years.

It's Joost The Next Huge Thing

First there was Friendster. Then there was MySpace. Now there is YouTube. And coming soon, there will be Joost. Beleive us now and hear us later this will be the next huge thing to hit the Internet. How hot is it? Well, the guys that designed it also are the duo repsonsible for Kazaa and Skype. That alone should have you dabbing the salivation from corners of your mouth. But what exactly is it? We'll let them tell you:

Medical Schools Plan to Increase Enrollment

From the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC):

First-year enrollment in U.S. medical schools is projected to increase 17% by 2012 to nearly 19,300 students, according to a survey of medical school expansion plans released by the AAMC today. The estimated expansion would move U.S. medical schools to the halfway point of the 30% enrollment increase recommended by the AAMC last year. Many of these planned increases, however, depend upon state support or other outside funding sources. Survey results indicate that total first-year enrollment in existing U.S. medical schools is projected to increase by 2,558 students (15.5%). Projected enrollment in new medical schools accounts for an additional 1.5% of the expansion.

Just thought you should know that the competition will be increasing.

CMS Proposes Rule to Calculate Teaching Costs at Nonhospital Sites

We have received some interesting feedback after we wrote about New York governor, Elliot Spitzer, and his effort to get back Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) funding that was being given to "phantom doctors". We even got a comment from a program director who angrily claimed that this was absurd considering the underfunding of most urban hospitals. Who new PDs even read StopPagingMe!?

Well, we thought we would continue the discussion with this update courtesy of CMS. Read and enjoy:

CMS has issued a proposed rule that would make it significantly easier for hospitals to meet the requirement that they pay “all or substantially all” of the teaching costs for resident rotations at nonhospital sites. Payment for “all or substantially all” teaching costs is required for hospitals to obtain reimbursement for direct and indirect graduate medical education (GME and IME) reimbursement.

Wasted Education

An interesting article appeared in today’s New York Post. Turns out that the recently elected Governor Eliot Spitzer has caught on to the fact that several NY area hospitals were being paid for residents and fellows that were not actually training in the paid institution.

This is laughable to anyone who trains in a large city as hospitals are changing leadership and affiliations so frequently these days but medical education is rarely, if ever a real consideration in the transition.

Destination Therapy Unknown

It is clear that people are getting older in this country. And as they get older, they often get sicker. The largest single killer in this country, heart disease, currently has no foreseeable cure and other than medical therapy and prevention of sudden cardiac death, there is very little doctors can do for the severely failing heart.

Another truism that we must confront in the medical community is the fact that orthotopic cardiac transplant will never be the solution to the thousands and thousands of Americans with heart failure.

Travel Medicine

Drug Rep: I'm Suing

A six-figure salary, free dinners, company car and a paid cell phone is not enough for some. Namely, Susan Schaefer LaRose, a former sales rep for drug giant Eli Lilly is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for 18 years worth of unpaid overtime.

PhysicianLoans.com Scores with Doctors

Every once in a while we encounter a service or company that peaks our interest and any time one of them advertise their dedication to helping doctors, it gets really interesting.

It happened that our staff was recently "in the market" for some real estate and while we never closed the deal, we did make a nice little discovery of a company that advertised their desire to cater to doctors.

PhysicianLoans.com helps already loan-laden doctors straighten out their mortgage situation and for us, understand what factors contribute to a very complicated process. Read below to learn more about these doctorphilic types.

Bush Manages to Further Inhibit Healthcare

We really did not think it possible, but even after losing both The House and the Senate, Dubya has still found a way to leave his mark of stupidity on the country's healthcare system.

Severely inhibiting federal funding of stem cells was not enough of a gift to the Christian Right so our country's worst President in history hired and anti-abortion, anti-sex education advocate to oversee the federal Office of Population Affairs and its $283 million annual budget has angered family-planning advocates, according to the AP.

What We're Into

At StopPagingMe.com, part of our mission is to save you time by pointing out the best educational resources. You have heard us praise UpToDate and chat up the little blue wonder that is The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine. Now let us introduce you to the best ECG learning website available: ECG Wave Maven.

Here's why we love the Maven: 1) It's FREE!!!; 2) It has more ECGs than you could go through in a month of motivated ECG practice and all of them are beautifully displayed with the capability to enlarge; 3) Each ECG is ranked according to difficulty and has a fantastic explanation attached when you are ready to give up; 4)Did we mention it's FREE???

Love Doctor

by Tina Wu
Dear Tina,
I am a third-year in Cali and I have issues. I’m doing a surgical clerkship right now and my resident definitely seems to be throwing out the vibes, if ya know what I mean. He’s an okay guy and really smart but I’m not sure I’m into him. How should I handle his advances and what can I do now?

Cringing in Cali

A Call to Action: Solutions for the Healthcare Worker Crisis

"We won't deny that we love speaking our minds - and we're pretty good at it, if we do say so ourselves. But you readers out there also make some good points and far be it form us to prevent housestaff form speaking their minds. Thus, we introduce our 1st installment of Progress Notes, submissions form you, the readers, on a variety of topics. If you would like to write something for StopPagingMe.com, click here and write your heart out. "
By: Tina Wu

This weekend I was at the Doctors for Global Health General Assembly and a common question continued to be asked: What do I do to get myself and others involved? There were many people that wanted to serve the underserved but did not know the best vehicle for action.

What We’re Into

Since YouTube is the new MySpace, we wanted to drop some video knowledge on you. It just so happens that some knowledge was indeed provided to us by a unique surgeon who get his point across by slinging rhymes and spinning records. Click on the pic to experience the OR OG.

What We're Into

NEW YORK - Since we always respect good satire and we are probably a little too into the Internet, it figures that this week we are into TheBurg.TV, a mock reality show spoofing the hipster infestation that plagues Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Playing on the reality show genre, this web-show features short commercial-free episodes about a collection of twenty-somethings living in the heart of New York's most image-conscious area - even though Williamsburgers would never admit that.

What We're Into

Since YouTube is the new MySpace, we wanted to drop some video knowledge on you. It just so happens that some knowledge was recently provided to us by a unique surgeon who gets his point across by slinging rhymes and spinning records. Click on the pic to experience the OR OG, Dr. James Gordon.

What We're Into

Multielectrode recording arrays - These are what allow Professor John Donoghue, PhD to translate thoughts into actions. In a study that seems more science fiction than neuroscience, a small electrode implanted onto John Nagle's motor cortex allowed him to move a mouse, turn on the lights, and control a prosthetic hand - despite being paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Takes Two to Tuangou?

The Office

It's time to talk about on-call entertainment. In this day and age of Netflix, cheap and portable DVD players and now video iPods, there is no way you should be reading on-call. Did we just say that? Seriously, save your reading for when you want to fall asleep at home. Did you know that you can now download the best movies and TV shows online and watch them on your iPod? If not, click above and find out the real deal. I have to go as I stole my girlfriend's video iPod and plan to watch Best of the Daily Show until my eyes bleed.

SkyScape

Disability Insurance – What You Need to Know

Many of us are at the stage in our lives where concepts that once seemed so far away are now staring us in the face. Things like having children, getting a job, saving money, buying a home, protecting your family - these were concerns for our parents, not us. But the truth is, we're not in school any more and we have put in long hours of training and studying to get to this point. It is now our responsibility to plan for the future and this why we have begun our newest series: Residential Planning. Every month we will tackle a new issue that residents face inside (and outside) the hospital and bring you the hard facts as well as interviews with experts in the field. Our only goal is to educate you and provide you some framework with which to make future decisions.

We begin with a topic that many of you have probably heard about but rarely taken seriously: DISABILITY INSURANCE. You're young, healthy, and careful in the hospital so you don't need to think about getting sick or injured on the job right? How many doctors actually become disabled? Your hospital would help you if you couldn't work, wouldn’t they? How many doctors actually end up needing Disability? To help us better understand the real deal with Disability, we have brought in Paul Ferrante of Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, named one of America's Most Admired companies by Fortune Magazine and ranked #1 by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).


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