Jan 15, 2008
Grand Rounds: Briefing the Next US President
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,
Thank you for visiting Grand Rounds, the weekly collection of the best health and medical blog posts, in the midst of your very busy schedule.
The health and medical blogosphere would like to make sure you and your team take into account the issues outlined below as you and your aids formulate your policies and put together the team that will further define and implement them.
Without further ado, let me outline these 40 questions and topics.
Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,
1. Your main asset is your brain. What have you done lately to maintain your brain? (SharpBrains).
Health Policy
2. Who do you support as US Science Advisor? (A Blog Around the Clock).
3. Not to depress you but…are you aware that healthcare reform is really hard? how will you change all this? (Medinnovationblog).
4. How will you increase price transparency of medical procedures and engage consumer forces? (Val Jones).
5. Sorry to insist, but this is an important point. Why is there so much confusion and misinformation about procedure prices? (Insure Blog).
6. Have you seen the recent figures that show how lack of insurance reduces cancer survival rates? (Highlight Health).
7. The cost of fruits and vegetables is growing higher than inflation rates, and we have a growing obesity problem. What will you do? (The Diet Dish).
8. In the midst of multiple economic pressures, how will you make sure to add “Care” back to Health Care? (Hospital Impact).
Health Sector Professionals
9. How will you address the Nursing Shortage? (Emergiblog).
10. How will you reward, motivate and recognize medical innovators? (Clinical Cases and Images).
11. How will you motivate professionals who put their own health and happiness at risk to take care of others? (In My Humble Opinion).
12. Would you agree that this neurosurgeon deserves his compensation? (Retrospectacle).
13. How can we motivate more doctors to take Emergency Calls? (Everything Health).
14. If you are Obama, you already know this. If you aren’t, how are your healthcare proposals better than his? (Healthline Connects).
15. Have you spent time dealing with the realities of day-to-day hospital issues? (Trauma Queen).
16. Mr(s) President: you are a key participant. Do you know how much we want you to suceed? (Chronic Babe).
Emerging Topics
17. Aging-related research is neglected in comparison to disease-specific research — which doesn’t make much sense. How will you help correct this? (Ouroboros).
18. How will you facilitate cross-sector collaborations to design, evaluate and bring to market new technologies? (Diabetes Mine).
19. Should every physical rehab facility make Nintendo Wii games available to patients? (How to Cope with Pain).
20. Is evidence-based medicine the panacea? (Hope for Pandora).
21. Will you help us help ourselves? (BrainFit4Life).
22. How will you help set the balance between the benefits and the misuse of antibiotics? (A Chronic Dose).
23. Will technology and games help reduce depression rates? (Doc Gurley).
Global Issues
24. What will you do to help the thousands of veterans (estimated at 30% of returning soldiers) coming back from Iraq with PTSD? Will you take this toll into account before you embark into another war? (NY Emergency Medicine).
25. What can we do to reduce cholera rates in Africa and parts of Asia? (Kolahun).
26. Given the risk of global epidemics, what will you do to prevent outbreaks and dissemination of infectious diseases? (Interested Participant).
27. Why has the malaria problem grown so much in Africa, and what can we do to reverse it? (Ipex).
28. Can you help reduce the rate of innocent mistakes in South Africa? (Other Things Amanzi).
Ethical Concerns
29. Should doctors use the placebo effect in the patient’s benefit? (Just a Geeky Girl).
30. A cocaine vaccination is no longer science-fiction. Would you allow, enforce, or prohibit it? (Mind Hacks).
31. What is your position on the lethal injection debate? (Every Day Nurses).
32. If nothing else works, how do we ensure noble and comfortable deaths? (Digital Doorway).
33. If you see him, would you please remind Dr. Phil of HIPAA regulations? (JeffreyMD).
Specific Medical Conditions
34. How will you help parents whose kids have attention deficits navigate through emerging research? (Health Business Blog).
35. We live in an increasingly complex world. What can you do to help improve the mental health of our teenagers? (Teen Health 411).
36. Imagine that, while hiking with some friends, one of them gets injured. Would you know how to provide first aid? (Medicine in the Outdoors).
37. How will you help disseminate best practices, such as this example for Chronic Rhinitis? (Allergy Notes).
38. Do we really know what Schizophrenia is? (Med Journal Watch).
39. Can we do better newborn screening for “Bubble Boy Disease”? (Science Roll).
40. Can eating beans help prevent Diabetes? (Disease Proof).
Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President, good luck with the primaries and the elections.
Yours sincerely,
Alvaro, the host of this Grand Rounds Edition, on behalf of this amazing community (thanks, Nick!)
PS1: given the One-Person One-Vote principle and the theme of this edition, I have included all submissions.
PS2: Next edition will be hosted on January 22nd at ButYouDontLookSick.com
PS3: credit for pic goes to Wikipedia. Image is titled Street Musicians in NYC.
Nicely done.
[…] Alvaro at Sharp Brains is hosting Grand Rounds this week, with a timely briefing to our next Mr. or Mrs. President about all of the medical blogosphere’s health concerns and questions. Excellent presentation, and great reading. I feel honored to be included. […]
[…] The movement for a Science Debate 2008 is gaining traction, and the latest edition of Grand Rounds (the medicine blog carnival) directs some pointed questions towards the candidates. […]
Wow! That’s a great metaphor, and a super effort.
Thanks for hosting, and for including our post.
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A Presidential Grand Rounds…
Blogger Alvaro Fernandez, who hosts Sharp Brains, presents a tremendous ‘Rounds. It’s in the form of a letter to our next President, offering a myriad of ideas, opinions and insights on health care delivery and financing. There are over 3 dozen items…
This is great, Alvaro. I like the blocks of questions format! Great job!
My first time participating in Grand Rounds–excellent round-up!
Great job — creative and interesting! Thanks for hosting!
Great job! Love the format. Thanks for including my post!
Excellent format! Great job. Now wouldn’t it be cool to get Hillary over here for a look-see?
[…] That was the question asked by Alvaro at Sharp Brains as he collected submissions for this week’s Grand Rounds. […]
Thank you all, for your participation. Most of the articles are simply superb! I learned a lot just by reading them.
Amy: I’d certainly love Hillary, and the other candidates, to take a look…it would be amazing to have a candidate ask another one during a debate, “what exactly would you do about the Grand Rounds 40 health issues?”
[…] 15, 2008 Grand Rounds Posted by ouroboros under Carnivalia, Public sector The medical and health blog carnival“Grand Rounds” is up at SharpBrains — and the theme is an interesting one: “Briefing the US President”. Alvaro has done a great job of rounding up 40 (!) posts from around the biomedical blogosphere, all related in some way to advice we’d like to give (or questions we’d like to ask) the 44th President of the United States. Topics covered include health policy, health care professionals, emerging scientific topics, ethics, and detailed pieces on specific medical conditions. […]
[…] The latest Grand Rounds, a weekly carnival on medical and health blogging, is a collection around the theme of “Briefing the Next U.S. President.” Check it out at Sharp Brains.Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade […]
[…] Check out the latest edition of Grand Rounds at SharpBrains. +del.icio.us +Digg it […]
Grand Rounds is up at SharpBrains…
The latest edition of Grand Rounds — the weekly medical blog carnival — is up at SharpBrains, in the form of a briefing book prepared for the next president.– David Harlow…
[…] I’m a day behind, but Grand Rounds is up over at Sharpbrains. Impressive collection of what the medical/nursing blogosphere would like the next PODUS (president of the United States) to know. […]
[…] Grand Rounds link for this week! […]
[…] The Doc Gurley post on using a mood-altering computer game is included in this week’s international medical grand rounds of blogs. This week’s host, Alvaro Fernandez, of http://www.sharpbrains.com did an awe-inspiring job of summarizing 40 sites with fun, catchy one-sentence summaries. Talk about setting the bar high! If you’re looking for a fun, user-friendly way to scan lots of quality blogs on an impressive variety of medical topics, check out Grand Rounds here. […]
[…] » Grand Rounds: Briefing the Next US President « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,Thank you for visiting Grand Rounds, the weekly collection of the best health and medical blog posts, in the midst of your very busy schedule. […]
[…] Grand rounds, the weekly best of the medical blogosphere is up at Sharp Brains. […]
Are there any concrete practice applications to aid children (age 4–18)that are experiencing acute psychiatric illnesses, some trauma related, to maintain cognitive abilities? What do you think of coherence training?
Hello Karen
1) It depends on the specific problem. Cognitive therapy and some cognitive training programs have shown to be useful as part of a multi-modal intervention.
2) Coherence training: if you refer to heart rate variability biofeedback, we think that can be a useful tool for emotional self-regulation in general. I don’t know if there is research for specific clinical conditions. To provide overall context, we reviewed a great paper last year: Appelhans BM, Luecken LJ. Heart Rate Variability as an Index of Regulated Emotional Responding. Review of General Psychology. 2006;10:229–240.
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/02/11/heart-rate-variability-as-an-index-of-regulated-emotional-responding/