(Listen here instead) Good clinical thinking is good critical thinking. Critical thinking in medicine requires a variety of tools in our cognitive armamentarium. We must […]
Cancer Screenings and Over-diagnosis: Pick The Outcome That Matters
Source What are the principles of a good screening test? The test should identify a clinically important disease that, if left untreated, will cause significant […]
It’s Either Normal … Or It Isn’t? Watch Out For The Drift
It’s Either Normal … Or It Isn’t? Is this true? Well, yes. This black and white statement sounds false to anyone with even a little bit […]
Clinical Reasoning: The Scope of the Problem
What are some of the problems with the way doctors think? The answers to this question are complex. The problems are many and the scope […]
You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition
Fivethirtyeight.com has posted an excellent article about nutritional studies, entitled You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition. This is well worth reading and is […]
The Ethics of Deviating From Guidelines
Unfortunately, it is all too common for physicians to proudly and defiantly deviate from national guidelines or accepted practices related to patient care. This may […]
How Do I Diagnose A UTI?
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are commonly over-diagnosed in emergency departments and ambulatory settings. As many as half of all women presumptively treated with a UTI […]
Measuring How Well A Test Works, or How To Find a Hipster
Imagine we design a test to detect a disease. In the graph below are 500 patients. Some patients have a positive test result and also have […]
Prenatal Antidepressants and Autism? Mi dispiace!
A new study has been published in the Dec. 14, 2015 issue of JAMA: Pediatrics, which claims a link between prenatal use of antidepressants, particularly in […]
Primer: How To Systematically Read A Scientific Paper
The ability to read scientific literature critically is one of the foundational skills of physicians. The most common way (and perhaps the most wrong way) that […]