September 14th, 2013
Podcast 167 — The polypill: adherence at last?
Running time: 7 min The recent JAMA article examining the effects of the “polypill” on adherence and clinical benefits in patients with (or at high risk for) cardiovascular disease, is our topic. The polypill in this trial contained fixed doses of four separate drugs: aspirin, a statin, lisinopril and one other blood-pressure-lowering drug — either atenolol […]
August 1st, 2013
Podcast 164: Talking about death
Running time: 11 minutes Last month John You and his colleagues published a guide to discussing advance care planning with patients at high risk of dying in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It’s full of practical advice, and I thought it would be interesting to get a sense of You’s approach to this difficult issue that all […]
November 10th, 2012
Podcast 159: Making the Clinical Diagnosis, But Blowing the Patient’s Treatment Preference
Running time: 20 min. In some diseases there are two diagnoses to make: the clinical diagnosis and the diagnosis of what the patient’s treatment preference is. The first is hard enough to make, and the widening choice of treatment choices complicates the second. Welcome to the task of “preference diagnosis,” which can lead to disappointment and worse […]
October 18th, 2012
Podcast 158: Physician-assisted dying — a conversation with Dr. Marcia Angell about the Massachusetts ‘Death with Dignity’ ballot question
Our conversation explores the question that Dr. Marcia Angell poses in a recent essay in the New York Review of Books: May doctors help you to die? Angell’s is the first name to appear as the sponsor of a November 6 ballot initiative here in Massachusetts, which is modeled on the Oregon law already in place. I’d […]
May 14th, 2012
Podcast 155: What’s wrong with U.S. healthcare and what will save it?
Dr. Arnold Relman, longtime observer of the U.S. healthcare system and editor emeritus of the New England Journal of Medicine, proposes two major reforms: First, private insurance companies should leave the healthcare field, and second, physicians should organize into multispecialty practices. His proposals, just published in BMJ, grow out of his alarmed observation — some 30 […]
December 9th, 2011
Podcast 138: Why do kids in the U.S. get so many inappropriate broad-spectrum antibiotics?
When kids go for ambulatory care, they get an antibiotic prescribed about 20% of the time. Half of those antibiotics are of the broad-spectrum variety. What are the factors leading up to this, and what are some resources to turn to for better information on this dangerous situation? Listen in to this 27-minute podcast with the first […]
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