Always start with the standard questions applied to the patient’s Chief Concern(s): Location/Radiation; Quality/Severity; Duration (total/episode)/Frequency; Aggravating/Relieving Factors; Associated Symptoms/Effect on Function. It is useful to think of the secondary history as a Focused Review of Systems (ROS). These questions often bring out information that supports a certain diagnosis or helps gauge the severity of […]

This is a great documentary from 2008 that explores how other wealthy countries deal with healthcare. The corespondent T.R. Reid visits five capitalist countries that provide affordable, nearly universal coverage for their citizens. How do they do it? He observes that here in the US we have the British model for veterans, the Taiwanese model for seniors, […]

Being able to handle emotional situations is an important interviewing skill. It is safe to assume that every patient has some form of emotional response to significant illness. There is also growing evidence that an individual’s emotional state can effect or even cause physical disease. The patient will often give you several clues that should […]

At the most basic level, insurance is about sharing risk. For example, a group of one thousand homeowners band together to create an insurance pool to protect against fire. If homes are worth $100,000 and there is one fire per year, they would have to chip in $100 each. Fortunately the risky event is rare, […]

One of the biggest fears facing Americans is loss or denial of health insurance. This recent analysis concludes that up to half of adults under age 65 are at risk of being denied due to a pre-existing condition. Note that the dark blue bars on the graph below are based on criteria provided by the […]

Canvass ARS is a flexible and scalable program for polling a live audience. Instructors have the choice to use it as a stand-alone presentation tool, or integrate it with presentation software such as Powerpoint. It blends easily with other instructional technologies such as teleconferencing, streamed video events and Webinars. The audience is not limited to […]

While searching for something else, I came across this important article from 2001 by Clyde Hertzman concerning the relationships between wealth, society, and health. One graph from the article says it all—the United States is deep in the “worse outcome, higher expenditure” quadrant. The author begins by defining the Socioeconomic Gradient as the relationship between social […]

I have begun using Twitter for links to articles and other sites on a daily basis. My Twitter address is: http://twitter.com/richardrathe   My personal twitter address is: http://twitter.com/richard_rathe

We are consolidating most documentation and policy information on the new http://docs.medinfo.ufl.edu/ site. Much of my operational writing is now contained there.

I’ve collected various PowerPoint resources and links on a single page. These include my Using Powerpoint Effectively Handout and information about Edward Tufte, who has written extensively on the use and abuse of this ubiquitous tool. He is shown here explaining how critical information may become obscured by excessive bullets and other “auto content” features (as was the case with the Columbia disaster).