The Weekly Wrap: July 5-10, 2008

Once again, the Cup of Blogging runneth over. Here were some of the posts I appreciated this week:

Of clinical interest, many of my blogging colleagues spent time crafting vignettes so the rest of us can improve ourselves:

• Dr. David reviewed the latest on Vitamin D in cancer prevention.
• The master suturer, Ramona, provided a great review of topical anesthetic creams I know will change how I prepare patients for owie-procedures.
• The Buckeye Surgeon gave us the skinny on diagnosis and management of bowel obstruction. If you ever work in a hospital, you'll see a lot of bowel obstructions, so read up now.
• Dr. RW called us all out on our collective failure to adopt early goal directed therapy of sepsis. I know I read up on EGDT again after his post.
• Ramona, who was really hitting them out of the park this week, presented another excellent review of hand surgery, this time on flexor tendon repair, including gnarly photos.

As always, we have our health policy pundits who have kept a critical eye on the latest idiocies to issue from our government leaders:

• Dr. Rob commented upon the stupidity of Medicaid. He'll get no argument from me.
• Dr. Happy, in his own unique voice (I think he is the Jon Stewart of healthcare blogging), places the responsibility for the ongoing decimation of primary care under CMS rules firmly at doctors' feet.

I have had more than my share of annoyance at hospital administrators in my brief professional life, but then I never had the honor of working at Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center, whose CEO, Paul Levy, writes a terrific blog in which he reveals how a med center should handle a mistake. There's been a lot of talk about this revelation on the blogs this week, and he even discusses some of the follow-up comments. But what impressed me most is that, even in the midst of public scrutiny over the mistake, Mr. Levy has not taken his eye off the list of little things he's also working on making right for his hospital employees.

Finally, there are always some hilarious posts on the blogs every week. To whit:

• Not Totally Rad provided this list of medical malapropisms.
• GruntDoc reported on the latest serum findings in chronic drug abusers.

Thanks to all you bloggers for keeping the rest of us on our toes!

Comments

[The Happy Hospitalist]

Before I forget. I gotta say. I love your blog. Keep up the great work.

Happy