"Doctors Slam New Recommendation That We Should Stop Antibiotic Treatments Early"

Via Instapundit:  Scientists from the UK caused quite a stir this week, when they announced that we don’t necessarily need to complete a full course of antibiotics in order to treat infections properly. It’s a provocative message, but skeptics say their advice is grossly premature—and even reckless.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not caused by putting an early stop to a prescribed course of antibiotics, but by antibiotic overuse, argue a team of infectious disease experts in The British Medical Journal. The team, led by Martin Llewelyn of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, is asking doctors, educators, and policy makers to “stop advocating ‘complete the course’ when communicating with the public.”

Which, wow. This is a complete turn-around from what we’ve been told for years—that we need to finish our bottles right down to the last pill in order to properly treat our infections and prevent the proliferation of microbial resistant bacteria. According to these experts, we’ve been wrong about this, and what’s more, the “complete the course” culture may be responsible for the rapid decline in antibiotic effectiveness.

(Link to more)

"Women still outnumbered in medical leadership by men with mustaches"

Washington Post : The study, in short, found that mustaches -- while increasingly rare, with the researchers citing reports that less than 15 percent of men in the United States sport such facial hair -- still outnumber women in positions of medical power.

"We defined a mustache as the visible presence of hair on the upper cutaneous lip and included both stand alone mustaches (for example, Copstash Standard, Pencil, Handlebar, Dali, Supermario) as well as mustaches in combination with other facial hair (for example, Van Dyke, Balbo, The Zappa)," the researchers write in the study. "Department leaders with facial hairstyles that did not include hair on the upper lip (for example, Mutton Chops, Chin Curtain) were considered not to have a mustache. We evaluated each leader for the presence of facial hair regardless of sex."...

And before you get all up in arms about the suggestion that women should outnumber men, stop and think for a second about how few men with mustaches you know. If you don't live in Portland or Brooklyn, chances are pretty good the answer is very very few.

Of the 1,018 medical department leaders examined by the study, only 190 were moustachioed men. But only 130 were women. That's 13 percent women and 19 percent men with visible hair on their upper lip. Bringing the mustache index up to 1 without adding more leadership positions would actually still leave us pretty far from gender parity.

"What are the red flags that people shoud look out for in order to avoid an incompetent or "bad" doctor?"

Doctors of Reddit, Up voted comments...

Unfortunately I don't think there's a simple way for people without a medical background to evaluate the competence of their doctor. We get credited with cures unrelated to treatment and blamed for misfortunes that could not have been reasonably avoided. Patient satisfaction has far more to do with a doctor's interpersonal skills than their clinical acumen.

"Patient satisfaction has far more to do with a doctor's interpersonal skills than their clinical acumen."
My wife works for a surgeon's group and we've talked about how malpractice claims track with bedside manner, and not the skill of the clinician.

As a layman, I believe this and it scares me shitless. Especially when I think of the incompetent people in my profession, who people have no idea are incompetent, and apply that thought to medicine.

I have to say that patient satisfaction isn't what a doctor should look out for first and foremost. My mother is a midwife (i.e. not a doctor, but still in a medical profession) and through her I've seen and heard of the 'rankings' their patients give. The top 10 best midwife practices in the country are always the ones that give in to demands.

"But I want my baby to be born at home!" "k" "You're the best in the country11!!1!" is a common situation, despite the fact that in many cases the decision a good midwife should have made is to have the kid be born in the hospital. I regularly heard about patients who were outraged and angry when my mother firmly said that they couldn't have the kid be born at home because it would be dangerous, and I've heard of a few cases where these women go to the competitor with an overlapping service area, get what they want and then rate these competitors as being the better practice, despite the fact that they did something that is medically inexcusable. Incompetence has many forms, but low patient satisfaction isn't always it.