Videos of Doctors Talking with Real Patients

Studies have shown that effective doctor patient communications are strong predictors of health outcomes. Communication skills are, therefore, critically important to health and healing in the acute and chronic care of patients.

The Bravewell Collaborative, with funding support from the Urban Zen Foundation, and the advice of Dr. Mack Lipkin, produced a set of videos of doctors talking with real patients; an accompanying teaching manual; and a lecture presentation. This resource is available free of charge.

Also available is a set of 5 minute clips of video about the patient-provider relationship.

Related Posts on communication:

Communicating with Patients about STD's

Health Literacy: The Ask Me 3 Campaign

Explaining Things with Medical Analogies

Just Ask! Communicating with Patients about STD's

Just Ask! is a free online self-paced course for health professionals to build skills in communicating about sexual activity. The aim of this course is to present the best practices and methods that will enable health care professionals to confidently interact with patients during the assessment, screening, treatment, and prevention of HIV and STDs.

The video cases for this course were produced to simulate actual patient-provider interactions.

Related Post:
STD Treatment Resources from the CDC

Street Names of Commonly Abused Drugs

According to addictions.org, because drugs are illegal in most places in the world today, talk of it has had to be coded. A very effective way of doing this is the development of a secret code language known and understood only by those who live in that world. In this way people can talk about illicit drug taking right in front of partners and parents without fear of them catching on.

Drug Free Pennsylvania offers information about commonly abused drugs, such as how they are used, street names, and illustrations.

The Street Drug Slang Dictionary from The Indiana Prevention Resource contains more than 3,800 street drug slang terms from the Indiana Prevention Resource Center files, with more than 1,200 additions from the National Drug and Crime Clearinghouse slang term list. It has a useful search box.

Street Terms Database, from the Office National Drug Control Policy, contains over 2,300 street terms that refer to specific drug types or drug activity. The database is used by police officers, parents, treatment providers and others who require a better understanding of drug culture.

Neurology E-Pearls of the Week

The American Academy of Neurology offers an E-Pearl of the Week sponsored by the Resident and Fellow Section.

Some past topics include:

EEG findings in Moyamoya disease (August 05, 2009)
Provocation of symptoms in Moyamoya disease (July 29, 2009)
Thoracic outlet syndrome and retrograde cerebral embolism (July 22, 2009)
HTLV-1 and tropical spastic paraparesis (July 14, 2009)
Applause sign (July 09, 2009)
Headache in ischemic stroke (July 01, 2009)

Check out the Archives as well.

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CT is Us: Radiology Pearls

Emergency ECG Training Module Online

The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine offers Emergency Electrocardiography Training Module.

The Module covers basics of reading ECG's, examples of different findings such as tachycardia or afib, and a library of ECG files for you to practice with.

Related Post:
ECG Wave Maven

Immunization Schedules for your PDA

Shots 2009 is a quick reference guide to the 2009 Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedules, a collaboration of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), and the 2009 Adult Immunization Schedule, recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Free Images from the CDC's Public Health Image Library

The CDC maintains a library of images, Public Health Image Library(PHIL) which includes medical illustrations, photos and multimedia files. Many of the images are free, and can be used to supplement presentations.

Topics Include:
Influenza
Natural disasters
Environmental Health
Bioterrorism
Electron micrographic imagery

Health Literacy: The Ask Me 3 Campaign

Ask Me 3 promotes three simple but essential questions that patients should ask their providers in every health care interaction. Providers should always encourage their patients to understand the answers to:
1. What is my main problem?
2. What do I need to do?
3. Why is it important for me to do this?

The National Patient Safety Foundation has materials available for download in aiding communication between physicians and patients including:

Words to Watch(English and Spanish)

Patient Brochure(English - SpanishFrench- ChineseRussian - Arabic)

Ask Me 3 ProgramImplementation Guide(English)