An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
April 30th, 2016
A Ridiculously Long Post: How EHRs Expose Unspoken Hierarchies Within Medicine — Or Maybe Are Just Bad
I am consulted by a surgeon about a patient with something that might be infectious, might not. A very appropriate referral. After seeing the patient and reviewing the history and scans, I decide a CT-guided biopsy is the next step. The nice radiology fellow tells me “Just place the order in [enter name of EHR here]”. Since this is the […]
April 24th, 2016
Why Getting Old Isn’t Always So Terrible — and Why People with HIV Can Now Get Life Insurance
Two patient-related anecdotes, then a news item. Anecdote #1: A little email exchange I had with one of my patients recently: Hi Paul, Wondering if you got the refill request for my meds from my mail-order pharmacy — their customer service is lousy, and I can’t tell if it’s been approved. I’d like to get […]
April 15th, 2016
Mystifying Abbreviations on Daily Medical Rounds
I am currently attending on the inpatient medical service — always a treat, and a great learning experience for me each year. Aside from the refresher on inpatient general medicine — hey, no amount of repetition is too much when it comes to working up hyponatremia — I’m also fascinated by the steady proliferation of abbreviations and acronyms, bits […]
April 2nd, 2016
You Too Can Have Fun with Academic Spam
Like most doctors who work at academic medical centers, I get a fair amount of “academic spam” — invitations to bogus meetings that take place in some exotic or at least warm place (China, Dubai, and Orlando are favorites), efforts to sell me monoclonal antibodies or, more recently, CRISPR-altered mice, and of course requests to contribute research papers or […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
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