Physicians many times don’t inform family members that other interventions, such as hand-feeding, may improve quality of life.

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My lede:

New York physicians may have to take off their neckties, jewelry, wristwatches and long-sleeved white coats when caring for patients if a bill under consideration in the state Legislature becomes law.

The bill, proposed in April in the state Senate, calls for a “hygienic dress code council” within the New York Health Dept. to consider advancing a ban on neckties and requiring physicians and other health professionals to adopt a “bare below the elbow” dress code in an effort to slash hospital-acquired infections.

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Patients with low incomes or chronic conditions who are covered by high-deductible health plans are not likelier than well-to-do or healthy patients to skip preventive care, said a study published in April.

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Physicians and other health professionals at Guantanamo Bay failed to properly document and report evidence “highly consistent” with detainee allegations of torture, says a case review of nine detainees’ medical records published in the April issue of PLoS Medicine.

Three of the detainees had documented physical injuries that were highly consistent with their allegations of abuse, including contusions, bone fractures, lacerations and peripheral nerve damage, said the study, written by two experts on the evidence of torture. The reviewers were hired as medical consultants by attorneys for some of the detainees.

The detainees said they were exposed to interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, stress positions, beatings, forced nudity, prolonged isolation and sexual molestation — all recognized as torture by the United Nations Convention Against Torture as well as the U.S. government before 2002.

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More education and research and superior product designs are needed to end unsafe injection practices that have led to 30 infectious-disease outbreaks in the last 10 years, said a coalition of physicians, nurses, manufacturers and government officials.

In the last decade, more than 125,000 patients have been notified about potential exposure to infectious diseases such as hepatitis C due to reuse of syringes, according to the Safe Injection Practices Coalition, which was formed in 2008. Along with Premier, an alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals, the coalition co-sponsored an April 26 meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the problem.

“These are largely preventable medical errors — they are not so different from wrong-side surgery,” said Joseph Perz, DrPH, who leads the prevention team in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a member of the coalition.

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My lede:

Articles in the most-read American news outlets usually fail to adequately discuss the pros and cons of new medical treatments, tests, products and procedures, according to an analysis of nearly 1,500 health stories from the last five years.

The finding is based on reviews done by a panel of more than 30 physicians, scientists, public health researchers, medical journalists and other experts affiliated with the website HealthNewsReview.org, which marked its fifth anniversary in April. Less than 30% of stories explicitly discussed the cost of new treatments, and only about one-third adequately covered their benefits and harms or addressed the quality of the medical evidence offered in their support.

“On most days, on most stories, we’re giving a kid-in-the-candy-store view where we’re making everything look terrific without noting the downside or noting the price tag,” said Gary Schwitzer, a former TV news reporter and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org. “And we wonder why we have a confused health care consumer population?”

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Those hired to care for seniors with cognitive problems also have trouble understanding medication instructions.

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My lede:

The number of hospitalizations due to medication side effects jumped by more than half between 2004 and 2008, says a federal report that heightened concerns about polypharmacy among an aging U.S. population.

Antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, benzodiazepines, corticosteroids, insulin, and blood thinners and other cardiovascular drugs were among the leading causes of more than 2.7 million hospital stays and treat-and-release visits to emergency departments in 2008, said the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report, released in April.

Opiates such as codeine and morphine were a principal culprit, implicated in 121,200 hospital stays and 44,300 ED visits. The latest confirmation of problems associated with painkillers came as the Obama administration launched an inter- agency attack on opioid misuse that a White House report dubbed “America’s prescription drug abuse crisis.”

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Ten states require hospitals to screen all ICU patients for the antibiotic-resistant superbug. New research, however, shows that approach may not work.

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My lede:

More hospitals are exploring new technological alternatives to the traditional “secret shopper” method of monitoring whether physicians, nurses and other health professionals clean their hands when they are supposed to.

Systems using wireless, infrared, radio frequency identification and alcohol-sensing technology offer the promise of more accurate data on hand-hygiene compliance while gently reminding forgetful health professionals to wash up before interacting with patients. So far, hospitals are using the technology to gauge their hand-hygiene performance and encourage compliance while steering clear of using the data in punitive ways.

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My lede:

Most people do not choose their names, but they can choose to love them, loathe them or change them. About a decade ago, one woman was known as Mercedes — like the German luxury car. It was not the name her parents gave her. It was not how she was listed on her death certificate.

Mercedes was the name she was given by a medical student dissecting her cadaver as part of the gross anatomy course at Indiana University School of Medicine Northwest in Gary.

“Why do you call her Mercedes?” asked anatomy instructor Ernest F. Talarico Jr., PhD.

“Because,” the student said, “she’s going to enable me to purchase a bunch of Mercedes.”

For Talarico, the student’s comment was the wake-up call that things needed to change. “That wasn’t what we were trying to communicate or trying to teach,” he said.

The experience of dissecting a cadaver in a lab always has separated the medical profession from the rest of society, but ideas about what — beyond basic anatomy — that rite of passage should teach have evolved.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dissection was seen as a transformative event, and medical students used black humor to defuse tensions surrounding what was then seen as a quasi-legal and ethically questionable activity. In the mid-20th century, anatomy became an opportunity for physicians in training to develop a skill that medical sociologists called “detached concern.”

Today, most medical schools opt for a more humanistic approach that uses ritual ceremonies to thank cadaver donors, encourages students to reflect on their experiences and, in some cases, allows students to meet and correspond with donors’ loved ones.

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My lede:

One-third of hospital patients experience adverse events and about 7% are harmed permanently or die as a result, according to a study that detected patient safety problems at a far higher rate than other methods.

The study, in April’s Health Affairs, echoes two reports issued in November 2010 that showed rates of adverse events hovering near 25% among hospitalized Medicare patients nationwide and at 10 North Carolina hospitals.

The findings draw attention to the safety troubles that have lingered in U.S. hospitals in the 12 years since the Institute of Medicine’s headline-grabbing report “To Err is Human.” The study cited research estimating that up to 98,000 patients die each year due to preventable medical errors.

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