2018 Archive

Stanford Medicine 25 Blog

  • Medical Students Recognize Importance of Bedside Manner

    Truly caring for the patient begins at the bedside with observation, examination and connection. An article in In Training – “Why is Bedside Manner Important” – describes the value of taking time to engage with patients at the bedside because a “chart can only reveal so much.”…

  • Using Riddles as Medical Teaching Tools

    In a recent article in The American Journal of Medicine (AMjMED), Stanford Medicine 25’s Abraham Verghese advocates for riddles as a teaching tactic.

  • AI is Doing More to Help Keep Doctors at the Bedside

    Prompted by the release of Sense.ly’s “Molly,” a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered avatar, a Forbes article examined “how humans and machines can work together to improve and transform” health care.

  • Teaching the “Intangibles” of Medicine

    An editorial on Healio.com highlights the importance of “intangibles” in medicine, primarily the connection between patient and provider. In the commentary, Leonard H. Calabrese, a rheumatologist and course director at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, shares concern that empathy and mindfulness are pieces of medicine “we know very little about.”…

  • Empathy and the Physical Exam Remain Essential Components of Medicine

    A recent article in Quartz says that while machine-learning technology is becoming more “pervasive in the health system,” empathy may be becoming obsolete… even though “it’s one of the reasons why people trust doctors."…

  • As Prices Drop, Point-of-Care Ultrasound May Spark Evolution of Physical Exam

    In a commentary for JAMA Cardiology, John Kugler writes, “The ‘wow’ factor is powerful with the latest generation of pocket ultrasound machines.

  • The 4th Annual Stanford 25 Bedside Teaching Symposium

    On September 7 and 8, Stanford 25 hosted its 4th Annual Bedside Teaching Symposium, an event that brings together medical educators from around the world to foster clinical teaching skills.

  • Finding Joy in Physical Exam Skills

    In an interview with hospitalist, Twitter personality and “Incident Report” host Zubin Damania, Abraham Verghese discusses the movement to bring physicians back to the bedside.

  • How Technology May Lead to Greater Human Connection at the Bedside

    Could the machine be the catalyst that brings us back to the bedside? It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s one theory Stanford Medicine 25’s John Kugler shared in this Medscape interview.

  • AI to Complement – Not Compete With –Physicians’ Diagnostic Skills

    It was big news earlier this summer. As reported by Forbes, “This AI Just Beat Human Doctors On A Clinical Exam.” The story unfolded on a stage in London where Babylon Health demonstrated its artificial intelligence software.

  • Compassion, Patience and Bedside Manner Improve Patient Satisfaction

    A study from Healthgrades and Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) analyzed seven million patient reviews and comments about health care providers. This Patient Sentiment Report found that over 52 percent of patients stated that they wanted their doctor to have at least one of the following qualities: compassion, comfort, patience, personality and bedside manner.

  • Technology Doesn’t Have to Be the Antithesis of Humanity

    In a commentary for Modern Healthcare, North Carolina physician Chris DeRienzo asks a question that we’ve also been exploring with great interest and passion: “Could technology actually return some humanity to healthcare?” DeRienzo believes it can, and we agree, of course.

  • The Miracle of a Patient’s Recovery

    If it was a movie script, you wouldn’t believe it. A 28-year-old woman has a miscarriage while on vacation in Mexico. When she goes to the doctor, a nightmare begins. She ends up spending the next five years in and out of hospitals. At one point, she’s told she’s going to die. She takes chemotherapy, sees a naturopath, sees doctors in her native Ukiah and at Stanford, even goes to Philadelphia and Boston to see experts on the disease. They all agree that nothing can be done.

  • The Tradition of Daily Bedside Clinical Care

    Brian Garibaldi, co-president of the Society of Bedside Medicine and contributor to Stanford Bedside Teaching Symposium, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) are reinvigorating beside medicine in the university’s residency training program.

  • Abraham Verghese Shares Story of the EHR’s Negative Consequences With Broader Audience

    In a recent feature piece for The New York Times, Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP addresses “the threat that electronic health records (EHRs) and machine learning pose to physicians’ clinical judgment – and their well-being.”…

  • The Basics vs. Technology Debate: When They Work Together, Everyone Wins

    A recent discussion on Medscape between two physicians posed the question, “Are Physicians--Let's Face It--Getting Clinically Lazy?” This bold question has prompted many responses from clinicians that has become an ongoing conversation on “The Basics Versus Technology: Which Wins?”…

  • Using Art to Teach the Human Side of Medicine

    In Spokane’s Providence Internal Medicine Residency rotation, students and residents study more than patient charts. Each morning, reports The Spokesman-Review, they also gather to chat briefly about a painting, image, piece of music or poem that one of them has brought in for discussion.

  • Journal Dedicates Entire Issue to “Enduring Value” of Bedside Medicine

    The latest issue of Medical Clinics of North America focuses entirely on a topic very important to us at Stanford Medicine 25 – the physical examination. The issue “explores the enduring value of the clinical encounter” and contains 14 articles related to bedside medicine and the physical exam.

  • Register Now for the 4th Annual Bedside Teaching Symposium

    This year, the 4th annual Stanford 25 Bedside Teaching Symposium will take place on September 7 and 8, 2018. Registration is now open!…

  • The Benefits of Bringing Doctors Back to the Bedside

    The first two episodes of a new podcast from Johns Hopkins Medicine focus on “bringing doctors back to the bedside,” and both feature members of the Society of Bedside Medicine, where Stanford Medicine 25’s Abraham Verghese serves as an Advisory Council member.

  • UMKC Case Highlights the Importance of a Thorough Physical Exam

    A recent case presented by the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) demonstrates the importance of physical exam skills and provides a clear example that lack of thorough history and complete physical exam can lead to diagnostic errors.

  • Bedside Medicine Training Helps Both New and Established Physicians

    A recent blog post on the Daily Nurse highlights the different ways nursing students, medical students and residents are being taught good bedside manner. This training builds clinicians’ communications skills and offers real-life experience.

  • Artificial Intelligence as a Partner in Patient Care

    Abraham Verghese and fellow Department of Medicine faculty Nigam Shah and Robert Harrington have authored an opinion piece on humanism and artificial intelligence which insists that “the two cultures – computer and the physician – must work together.”…

  • Physical Exam Can Sort Out - And Treat - Common Type of Vertigo

    Some older patients with dizziness undergo thousands of dollars of tests that often turn up nothing. Others are told it’s just a part of aging. But with the most common kind of vertigo, there’s actually an easy fix.

  • What Stands in the Way of Bedside Teaching?

    An opinion piece from The BMJ made the rounds a while ago on Twitter. The column, provocatively titled “The death of bedside teaching,” originally appeared in December 2016, but the points made by physician Mark Mikhail continue to reverberate. Is bedside teaching really dying?…

  • An Emphasis on the Bedside May Prevent Physician Burnout

    Physician burnout is a very real job hazard. However, according to a 2016 article in Consumer Affairs, “being present and mindful” with patients may be able to prevent burnout.

  • The Spine Sign

    Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has a sensitivity and specificity for pleural effusions of 93% and out performs chest x-ray in detecting and characterizing pleural effusions. Using POCUS physicians are able to detect as little as 5ml of pleural fluid.

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