I’ve often written about the low salary of infectious disease (ID) physicians as compared to other medical specialities. Much of this is due to ours being a cognitive field where we think more than we do and to the payment incentive plan being designed to reward volume and procedures more so than medical decision thinking. […]
Acute Kidney Injury with Concomitant Vancomycin & Pip/Tazo (Vancosyn, Vanczosyn, Vosyn)
Recently, a nephrologist I work with chased me down to ask my opinion of the new and interesting study that concludes concomitant vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam (hereforth to be called vancosyn) was more nephrotoxic than concomitant vancomycin and cefepime (vancopime). “Yes, indeed, I have heard the data but which study are you calling new?” I wondered. […]
Patients Lie
Patients lie. That’s not a secret. It’s the reason doctor notes read like police reports. “The patient denies smoking.” “The patient states they lost the prescription for Vicodin that the ER gave her two days ago.” It would be kinder if we wrote “the patient doesn’t smoke” and “the patient lost her prescription” but do […]
Infectious Disease – The Coolest Medical Specialty
I may just be biased but the coolest medical specialty out there by far is infectious disease (ID). It has been a while since I sung its praises on my path to being an infectious disease specialist here, here and here so this is a very overdue blog post. Everybody in medicine knows that the […]
The Practice of Financial Medicine
What’s that you say? You didn’t know about the specialty of financial medicine? Well neither did I until recently. No, this is not about President Obama’s plan for public health insurance. Although I do side with the American Medical Association in being skeptical of it I’m annoyed that their main bone of contention seems to […]