Original Article

Standardized Physician-Administered Patient-Centered Discharge Protocol Improves Patients’ Comprehension

Objectives: Patients are 30% less likely to be readmitted or visit the emergency department if they have a clear understanding of their discharge instructions. A standardized approach to a hospital discharge plan has not been universally implemented, however. Our goal was to increase patients’ comprehension of discharge instructions by implementing…

Original Article

Comorbidity Is a Competing Factor for Disease Recurrence Postnephrectomy

Objective: There is a relation between tumor stage and grade with the risk of cancer recurrence in patients undergoing surgical treatment for kidney cancer. The association of patient comorbidity with disease recurrence is less well characterized. The objective of this study was to explore the association between comorbidity and the…

Original Article

Diagnosis of Child Maltreatment: A Family Medicine Physician’s Dilemma

Objectives: Cases of child maltreatment (CM) in the United States remain high, and primary care providers lack the confidence and training to diagnose these cases. This study provides recommendations to improve family medicine physicians’ confidence in diagnosing CM. Methods: We e-mailed an electronic survey to family medicine residents and physicians…

Original Article

Inverse Correlation of Lymphoid Leukemia Incidence and Anemia Prevalence among Preschool Children

Objective: The relation between the prevalence of anemia and incidence of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia was explored using international cross-sectional data as well as US time-series data. Methods: Lymphoid leukemia incidence rates for various countries from the International Agency for Research on Cancer were regressed on anemia prevalence rates from…

Original Article

Utility of Hemoccult Testing Before Therapeutic Anticoagulation in Venous Thromboembolism

Objectives: Fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) is performed routinely before starting therapeutic anticoagulation in patients despite it never being validated to predict gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) risk. Our objective was to determine the utility in checking the guaiac FOBT test (gFOBT) before initiating therapeutic anticoagulation in patients with a new diagnosis…

Original Article

Physician Satisfaction in Treating Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Objectives: To determine whether treating conditions having medically unexplained symptoms is associated with lower physician satisfaction and higher ascribed patient responsibility, and to determine whether higher ascribed patient responsibility is associated with lower physician satisfaction in treating a given condition. Methods: We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1504 US…

Original Article

Breast-feeding, Leptin:Adiponectin Ratio, and Metabolic Dysfunction in Adolescents with Obesity

Objectives: Increased adiposity increases leptin and decreases adiponectin concentrations, resulting in an increased leptin:adiponectin ratio (LAR). In adults, components of the metabolic syndrome and other cardiometabolic risk factors, what we classify here as “metabolic dysfunction,” are associated with both a high LAR and a history of being breast-fed. The relation…

Original Article

Development of a Flipped Medical School Dermatology Module

Objectives: The flipped classroom module incorporates independent study in advance of in-class instructional sessions. It is unproven whether this methodology is effective within a medical school second-year organ system module. We report the development, implementation, and effectiveness of the flipped classroom methodology in a second-year medical student dermatology module at…

Original Article

Hospital Readmissions from Patients’ Perspectives

Objectives: Healthcare expenditures in the United States have increased exponentially and hospital care accounts for one-third of these costs. Approximately 18% of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries are being readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. Engaging patients in the discharge process can help better identify patients’ postdischarge needs and implement more…

Original Article

Initial Experience of a Primary Urgent Care Clinic Curriculum and Subspecialty Lectureship Series Implementation in a Los Angeles County Hospital

Objectives: Urgent care clinics are extremely busy in the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) County hospital system. We determined that residents and medical students in the internal medicine residency program who are rotating through these clinics did not receive enough teaching during their rotation. We decided to create and implement…

Original Article

Physician Order Entry Clerical Support Improves Physician Satisfaction and Productivity

Objectives: To examine the impact of clerical support personnel for physician order entry on physician satisfaction, productivity, timeliness with electronic health record (EHR) documentation, and physician attitudes. Methods: All seven part-time physicians at an academic general internal medicine practice were included in this quasi-experimental (single group, pre- and postintervention) mixed-methods…

Letter to the Editor

On “Battlefield Acupuncture: Is It Ready for Widespread Dissemination?”

To the Editor: You can easily call me schizophrenic. Not according to the medical definition but in the sense used by laypeople. In my article with Craig G. Gunderson, ‘‘Battlefield Acupuncture: Is it Ready for Widespread Dissemination?’’1 we conclude, after conducting a thorough literature search, ‘‘Although BFA [battlefield acupuncture] is…

Original Article

Why Is Reverse Takotsubo “Reverse”?

Objectives: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TTC) is an acute cardiac syndrome simulating myocardial infarction that is characterized by transient wall motion abnormalities in the absence of coronary artery obstruction. Reverse TTC (rTTC) is a recently described variant of TTC. This review defines and compares both forms of TTC, stating their resemblances and…

Original Article

Risky Teen Driving in a Rural Southern State

Objective: Alabama is one of the five US states with the highest teen driving mortality. We recruited teen drivers to participate in a questionnaire regarding high-risk driving behaviors. Methods: Teens were recruited from a large county school system to participate in a voluntary anonymous survey. Questions were taken in part…

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