I’m on clinical service now and my patients are dying left and right. And I’ve never been prouder of my own care, and that delivered by my colleagues and hospital. When I was in training, a patient’s death was invariably considered a medical failure, and thus an occasion for shame and silence – the Outcome-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. We treated it ...

In this week’s JAMA, Dr. Don Berwick, CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, argues that evidence-based standards should be relaxed for quality improvement practices. Ironically, a few pages away, a Swiss study finds than an IHI-endorsed MRSA prevention strategy doesn't work.What’s a person or hospital to do?A little background on both ...

My older son is gearing up to apply to college (:-\ and so I bought him one of the Bibles, the Fiske Guide. The book is cleverly written – enough academic factoids to get parents to spring for it, leavened with enough social scene skinny to get kids to read it. The Guide dutifully lists ranges of SAT scores for accepted applicants at 300 ...