Running time: 18 minutes In California, Garen Wintemute and his group find evidence that people are willing to discuss gun safety with their clinicians, especially when there may be danger of harm present. That willingness extends across gun owners and non-owners. So why aren’t more clinicians doing it? The findings appear in Health Affairs. Links to the article […]

Running time: 23 minutes Paula Byrne set out to understand what the available data tell us about how many people are taking statins for primary prevention — and how much good is it likely doing them? Also, how do you discuss their possible harms and benefits with patients? Links: Paula Byrne and colleagues’ analysis in The BMJ Kausik Ray […]

Running Time: 18 minutes Veterans Day will be here soon, and this episode introduces you to Patrick Tripp, a writer and radiation oncologist. He’s taken conversations with some of his patients and published thumbnail profiles of several in a remarkable essay in the London Review of Books (that’s right, it’s not a medical journal). The patients all […]

Running time: 21 minutes A white paper from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) advises clinicians, health planners, and emergency responders that the old ways of responding to mass casualty events no longer hold. Wounded people arrive in Ubers and Lyfts at hospitals that are unprepared to be trauma centers. It’s […]

Running time: 18 minutes JAMA has just published an analysis of the latest findings regarding waste in the nation’s $3.5 trillion annual health “co-pay.” And with 25% of that — some eight hundred billion dollars — characterized as wasted, you’d think there would be stacks of competing cost-saving proposals to consider, especially regarding administrative costs. There aren’t. […]

Running time: 20 min. Recently, Lancet Digital Health ran a meta-analysis concluding — if cautiously — that “deep learning” (more familiarly known as artificial intelligence) can be considered “equivalent to healthcare professionals” in image-based diagnoses. In an editorial commentary on the analysis, Tessa Cook says, in effect, “not so fast!” And she discusses the reasons behind that […]

Running time: 18 min. Laura Hawks and colleagues undertook a study of forced sexual initiation — that is, a woman’s first episode of vaginal intercourse (and it’s forced when it wasn’t voluntary on her part). Using government survey data on some 13,000 women of reproductive age, Hawks compared the women whose sexual initiation was voluntary with those […]

Running time: 21 minutes A national sample of early- to midcareer pediatricians shows that women are lagging behind men in compensation, and another study from the sample shows that they’re not getting much help with the housework, either. We talk with two of the authors of these studies and get their advice on what to do next […]

Using “Vitamin H” (haloperidol) or newer antipsychotics to treat delirium in hospitalized patients should be off the menu, writes Edward Marcantonio in an Annals of Internal Medicine editorial. Dr. Marcantonio agrees with the authors of a systematic review who conclude that “current evidence does not support routine use of haloperidol or second-generation antipsychotics to treat delirium […]

You surely remember “O-chem” — those late-night undergraduate hours spent grappling with benzene rings and alkanes and all the rest. Well, it turns out that drug makers were paying close attention to things like racemic mixtures and enantiomers. The manufacturers usually release their products as racemic mixtures and then, when patents are about to expire, […]