The New York Times Sunday magazine piece, “Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer,” is by Peggy Orenstein who begins: “I used to believe that a mammogram saved my life. I even wrote that in the pages of this magazine. It was 1996, and I had just turned 35 when my doctor sent me for an [...]
I’ll be in Boston this week to co-lead a workshop at the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) annual conference (12:45 pm, Thursday) on how to improve news coverage of medical studies and research. This is, I think, the 6th such workshop I’ve been involved in at AHCJ annual conferences through the years. [...]
Drug companies clearly have a lot riding on understanding doctors’ prescribing behavior and how they assign trust to brands and to specific drugs. A Harris Poll of physicians found that: “…when it comes to driving trust, emotional connection, relationships with sales representatives, and perceptions of the pharmaceutical company or companies backing the product can be [...]
My mother died last summer one month after being diagnosed with an ugly stomach cancer. The oncologist she saw only once handled the discussion of options masterfully. My mom chose no further explorations, no treatment beyond pain control, and spent her last month at home, with hospice care and with up to 15 helping family [...]
Two months ago, I read on the BMJ website “Citizens’ jury disagrees over whether screening leaflet should put reassurance before accuracy.” I’ve been following some of the controversies in the British National Health Service’s breast screening program for some time. An example here. I asked Angela Coulter, PhD, to write a guest blog post about [...]
A new analysis published in the Annals of Family Medicine,”Primary Care Physicians’ Use of an Informed Decision-Making Process for Prostate Cancer Screening,” found that 24% of primary care physicians who responded to a survey said they ordered screening without discussing it with patients. How’s that for shared decision-making? Fewer than 48% of those surveyed said [...]
2nd time this week I’ve linked to a Peter Ubel blog post. This one was as irresistible as a doughut is to Homer Simpson. And why is this a shared decision-making issue? Ubel writes: “Why all this talk about math with patients? Shouldn’t all this number stuff be handled by physicians? Shouldn’t chemotherapy decisions be [...]
Peter Ubel, M.D. is a physician and behavioral scientist at Duke University, and the author of Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Medical Choices Together. I don’t know how I missed his November blog post that asked the question above, but I now know that it appeared on his own [...]
Read or listen to Richard Knox’s piece. Among several strong elements in his story, he profiles Shannon Brownlee’s decision to stop having mammograms: Health writer Shannon Brownlee of the New America Foundation says the issue is a prime example of what she calls American medicine’s tendency to overdiagnose and overtreat disease. She’s the author of [...]
Each time the Dartmouth Atlas issues a new report, there’s a spike in news coverage about the work of the Atlas team. That’s the way news usually works: an announcement, an event – something is spoonfed journalists and they respond. Especially in these more difficult financial times in the news industry when story quotas remain [...]
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
While this story adequately addressed 7 of our 10 criteria, the 3 on which it missed were significant omissions, yet could have been easily addressed.
Solid medical conference reporting, with many expert interviews and good context provided. Goes far beyond the conference presentation itself.
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