Medical Education

How Future Doctors Choose Their Specialties

Drs. Paul Ciechanowski and colleagues found that 129 fourth year medical students from Univeristy of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who choose to enter primary care specialties are attracted to a patient centered environment that affords a “secure” relating style. Those who choose to enter non-primary care specialties are attracted to career rewards that afford a [...]

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New Google Co-Op for Health

Google has created clusters of online discussion format called Co-ops. The Co-op is about “sharing expertise” (source: Google Co-Op website), I assume from whoever feel they have expertise to share. A Google employee posted general criteria about what posts would be stricken from a Co-op group: The posting of commercial advertisements or other promotional material [...]

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What Open Medicine Is and Is Not

A benefit – and side effect – of Internet culture is an embrace toward access and openness. I can access an abundance of free information on the web. I’ve always embraced open source applications, like the one used to create this website, and will continue to do so as long as it’s available. However, a [...]

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Does it Pay to Pray?

By Yvonne Kao A study1 on the effect of intercessory prayer on recovery was reported in the American Heart Journal. The study procedure, in short: Cardiac bypass patients all around the country were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups: Uncertain/No Prayer: Patients in this group were told they might or might not receive [...]

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Media Hyping and Premature Promises Do Not Help

Recently, journalists picked up on a poster session on the effect of ginger on ovarian cancer cells at the 97th American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting (AACR) in Washington, DC (April 1-5, 2006). Forbes called it, “Ginger an Ovarian Cancer Killer.” The poster authors’ school, University of Michigan also sent out a press release [...]

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