What’s caught my eye in the literature recently?
This multi-dimensional frailty score is a nice new addition to the body of literature on frailty as a predictor of operative mortality. I, of course, have been carping that I still want a frailty score for the acutely injured patient, particularly the injured burn patient. I probably just need to turn that into another project on the project board, don’t I?
Inevitably I can find an education article to recommend. The output from a national invitational conference gives us some meaningful ideas on how to address challenges in transitioning from residency to independent practice. A great companion piece to read with it is a survey about readiness to practice. Clearly lots of concerns persist from many about how we best bring our residents forward from training to being our partners.
Because I have one PRP trial running and another starting soon, I was delighted to see someone else state they think that this is an area for broader investigation in burns.
Not surprisingly, Medicaid expansion is accompanied by increased use of specialty surgery services. I’m aware of several related manuscripts coming to publication in the next couple of months re: the Massachusetts experience with universal coverage and other Medicaid expansion projects. It’s important background for understanding the true impact of the ACA.
Last but not least, one more education piece, discussing how medical students define mistreatment. While I don’t support the concept of a hostile learning environment, I’m not certain that defining it as mistreatment is appropriate either. This is a genuine challenge as an educator and clerkship director.
For fun reading? I’m in the last 100 pages of Haldor Laxness’ Independent People. Earlier in the book I was ambivalent. I’ll now move to a full recommend, both for the beauty of the descriptions and for the characters. Bjartur is both pitiful and comical in his inflexibility, and while it costs him dearly at a personal level, the tale that unfolds is magical.