Galeno Consultants, Inc.

08/13/2010

Tragic case of mistaken
identity by hospital in Arizona raised bioethics questions and debate – what
can / should be done to prevent these situations?

Today was supposed to have been when family and friends gathered for a young woman's funeral after an auto accident in Arizona a week ago. But the plans were made before her family was hit with shocking news: The hospital misidentified the dead. Abby Guerra was still alive but in critical condition...

08/10/2010

Interesting look at the preparation for medical
school success: new study finds
that at Mount Sinai Medical School, humanities students can be doctors,
too. Report shows that these
humanities students perform as well as their pre-med peers.

From studying for the MCATs to the infamously difficult organic chemistry classes, not to mention physics, math and biology, pre-med undergraduate programs are notoriously stressful.  It's considered a necessary step on the path to...

07/30/2010

There’s a key bioethics debate raging that could affect us all -- should organ donation be an “opt out” instead of
an “opt in”? Here’s a recent
USAToday article that discusses the issue.

A suburban New York assemblyman whose daughter is a two-time kidney transplant recipient wants to flip New York's organ-donation system on its head by presuming people are donors unless they indicate otherwise.

07/27/2010

A recent study published in the Annals of Internal
Medicine has caused a bit of a stir
with regard to medical school rankings. The study weighed "social
mission" as one of the ranking criteria and ranked the nation’s 141
medical schools by how well they produced graduates who practiced primary care,
worked in areas with a federally designated shortage of health professionals
and belonged to underrepresented minority groups. This meant that some med
schools you may not hear about too often -- Morehouse College, Meharry Medical
College and Howard University -- ranked very high, while the traditional
cream-of-the-crop -- schools like Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins -- did
not fare as well. What do you
think? Should “social mission” be
a criteria for ranking med schools?
Here’s a great article featuring one of the study’s co-authors.

This week, FiercePracticeManagement reported on a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that raised quite a few eyebrows with regards to medical school rankings. The study looked at... Read more...

07/23/2010

Very interesting study and blog post on the WSJ Health Blog - emphasizes the need for personal attention and effort by medical residency applicants.

About 5% of residency application essays showed evidence of plagiarism, researchers say.

07/22/2010

Recent articles and a study outlines the shortage of primary care doctors - points to medical schools not turning out enough primary care docs. Instead graduates are being lured into more lucrative specialties. What does this mean for the primary care landscape and your local doctor’s office?

Many medical schools produce more researchers and specialists than front-line doctors, especially those willing to work in underserved areas and among minorities, a new study says.

07/16/2010

The New England Journal of Medicine has just come
out with new recommendations for duty hours for medical residents (who
currently work up to 80 hours per week).
What do you think of the recommendations?

Sounding Board from The New England Journal of Medicine -- The New Recommendations on Duty Hours from the ACGME Task Force

07/14/2010

The National Residency Matching Program (N**P) data
for 2010 is out - more medical school grads vied for 1st year
residency positions than ever before and the report outlines success rates and
the most competitive residency programs and specializations - very interesting!

06/29/2010

Shorter work days for young doctors? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703900004575325130511028968.html

Amid continued concern about errors by overworked medical residents, hospitals would be forced to sharply curtail shifts and increase supervision of some doctors-in-training under proposed new guidelines for residency programs.

06/29/2010

Shorter work days for young doctors? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703900004575325130511028968.html

Amid continued concern about errors by overworked medical residents, hospitals would be forced to sharply curtail shifts and increase supervision of some doctors-in-training under proposed new guidelines for residency programs.

06/28/2010

"Dr. Minicozzi provides invaluable reconnaissance into a territory of medical training that is obviously important yet has been oddly ignored: the transition into the role of attending physician." - Chris Feudtner, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. From "Doctors in Transition," Dr. Minicozzi's book about the socialization and bioethics of the first-year attending physician.

06/22/2010

Obama administration announces investment in primary care physician training, from AAFP: http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/government-medicine/20100618hhsinvestments.html

The Obama administration has officially unveiled a series of investments to expand the nation’s primary care workforce, including measures to train more than 500 new primary care physicians by 2015.