You Cited Wikipedia?!?

 

I am mostly working from home this month (I still have clinic a few days per week) with the goal of answering one question: Is Wikipedia accurate?  Wikipedia is easily one of the most polarizing sources for information available, especially in academia.  Teachers hate it and students love it and most people have formed some opinion on the site.  I admittedly love the web site and the whole concept behind the site and have developed a formal plan to answer the question of Wikipedia's reliability as a source of information.

As far as I know, every medical resident in the country has to participate in a research project during the course of their residency.  The requirements for my project were quite broad.  It has to be academic and focus on some aspect of medicine.  That was the only requirement.  As I said, I use Wikipedia quite frequently and some of my colleagues even make fun of me for doing so.  I decided to focus on this amazing source of information to determine how accurate (or inaccurate) the information contained on the site actually is.  In the coming posts I will explain how I went about answering this question.  Stay tuned.  The results might surprise you.

The Name's Bond

This weekend Sarah and I (and Katie) went to the theater to see Skyfall, the newest James Bond film.  It was the first time I had been to a movie theater in a few years.  I am not a huge movie fan in general but like Bond quite a bit.  I've been in a big kick over the past few weeks with all of the advertisements and have even watched a few of the older movies I have on DVD.  Today I was shopping on Amazon and found the whole Bond collection on Blu Ray (excluding Skyfall, of course) for only $130 and decided to get it as one of my Christmas gifts (I didn't want to wait as the collection was on sale and normally retails for around $300).  I am looking forward to watching all of the Bond films, starting with the first one Dr. No all the way up to the most current films starring Daniel Craig, not to mention all of the extras that come with the Blu Ray collection.

Traveling Back Through Time

Besides the autumn "fall back" in time this weekend, a couple of other things happened over the past few days which made it seem like I was time traveling into the past. 

Last week our DVR quit working out of the blue.  While I was on the phone with the cable company, it came up that we did not have a home phone line and asked if we had thought about getting one.  The last time we had a home phone line, we paid $20 a month for it and the only people who used it were the state police bugging us for donations.  I really didn't see the purpose in paying for the service so we discontinued it.  However, our cell phone service in our apartment is very poor.  I think it is due to the way our apartment building is constructed.  It can be very difficult to talk on the phone and dropped calls are common.  Obviously this is annoying and starting next summer I will begin taking at home phone call for the clinic I work at, so having a reliable phone line is a must.  So we went ahead and added a land line phone.  We got the phone service and upgraded our internet speed to 20 Mbps (I was clocking it at over 30 yesterday) for just $1.25 more per month (how could you pass that up for the internet speed boost alone???).  We bought a new home phone yesterday at Amazon.  I wasn't even sure if they still made phones like that.  I never thought I would buy one again.

The other thing that happened recently was on Saturday I was at the hospital interviewing fourth year medical students for positions in our residency program.  It was just three years ago when I was in their shoes interviewing for spots myself.  I remember how incredibly anxiety inducing the whole situation was.  Even though it was just three years ago, it seems a lot longer than that as a lot has happened in those three years.  How quickly the tables can turn.

An EPIC Week

I've spent close to 10 hours this week in a classroom learning about EPIC, the new electronic medical record software our hospital will be switching to shortly.  As soon as I discovered that there was actually a class to teach us how to use the software my expectations immediately were lowered.  Then when I got to the class, we were told that this was a very basic introduction to the system.

The fact that doctors are being forced to use these insanely complex systems is absurd in my opinion.  We have a dictation and charting system that has been used for years that is effective and quick.  With more and more demands on our time I question the value of having doctors doing what basically is secretary work.  Furthermore, if we are going to be forced to use these systems, they should be intuitive and easy to use.  They should not require a ten hour course to learn "the basics" and we should not have a screen that has about 100 button choices to chose from.

You might be fooled into thinking that being younger and growing up around computers would benefit me.  I am sure that to a certain extent I can pick up on things quicker since I've basically been around computers my entire life.  But no way could I walk up to a computer running one of these systems and figure out how to get it to do what I want it to without training and/or experience.  That's a real problem in my opinion.  These systems should be as intuitive as using Google.

Wings. Beer. Sports.

This past weekend was the first full weekend I've had off in over a month.  I took full advantage of it by doing nothing and it was everything I imagined it would be.  Below are pictures summing up what went on.  Lots of sports, to say the least.

Birthday Wishes

Thank you so much to everyone who wished me happy birthday.  Despite work, I had a pretty good weekend.  Sarah got me this tasty and amusing ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.

This weekend I have completely off and I have a 10 wings for free coupon to Hooters so I am going to take full advantage of that on Saturday afternoon.  Enjoy!

Communist Medicine

For the second straight year I received my flu shot because I was forced to do so.  I had no choice but to risk my job by saying no.  There is a huge push in this country to practice evidence based medicine and not to treat unless absolutely indicated.  Despite this, every where you look you are bombarded with information on the flu shot.  You can't even go to the gas station it seems like without seeing signs advertising places where you can get your flu shot.  There is huge pressure from society to get this shot that quite frankly doesn't even work that well.  According to the CDC, for the 2010-11 flu season the vaccine overall was only 60% effective.  Furthermore it works best for the people who need it the least: young, healthy individuals.  It frustrates me that so much emphasis is placed on a medicine that only works so-so.  Also, I read a lot of epidemiological studies (that's how I know that sinus infection you've got most likely is caused by a virus) and I have never once found any evidence that me getting the flu shot protects anyone (i.e. the patients I see) other than me, and yet I am forced into getting it.  It is absolutely absurd, non-logical medicine.

While I'm ranting on the tests I am forced to get, I get one to two PPD tests per year to test me for tuberculosis.  In my entire educational career I cannot remember one person who has had tuberculosis, save for one guy who had Pott's disease.  I would love to see the number needed to screen to get one positive on that test.  Meanwhile, the government says we need to cut back on screening for breast cancer, a disease that effects one in eight women, which is much more common than tuberculosis.