Medical Knowledge

Why Money Is Well Spent on Time

There are a few reasons why incentivizing clinicians to spend more time with patients can improve health outcomes. Doing so affords clinicians time to assess social determinants’ influences on their patients’ health experiences; offers opportunities to identify and respond to…

Decision Aids, Doorknob Moments, and Physician-Patient Solidarity in EDs

Potential benefits of decision aids and technology, such as artificial intelligence, used at the bedside are many and significant. Like any tools, they must be used appropriately for specific tasks, since even validated decision aids have limited utility when they…

Mindfulness Reminds Us What Health Care Is For

Could clinicians help people more if they were buddhas? This article considers what the late Thích Nhâ’t Hanh meant in his call to “become buddhas” and applies Nhâ’t Hanh’s mindfulness practices to managing crises and anxiety in health care settings….

Crisis Intervention Team Program Leadership Must Include Psychiatrists

Crisis intervention team (CIT) programs are partnerships between police and mental health community members developed with little involvement from psychiatrists. This article argues that psychiatrists should be one of the CIT program leaders to facilitate the transfer of persons in…

What Would It Mean for Health Care Organizations to Justly Manage Their Waste?

Waste generated by health care includes harmful emissions and often disproportionately affects already vulnerable communities. Justly restructuring health care waste management involves better understanding key drivers of waste production, using sustainability as an ethical value to guide disposal decisions and…

How Should We Respond to Health Care Generating Environmental Harm?

Clinicians and organizations in the health sector have healing missions, and physicians, specifically, take oaths to “do no harm.” Yet, paradoxically, health care operations contribute to pollution and exacerbate environmental disease burden. This article offers a view of how health…

How Should We Better Manage Human and Planetary Health in a Next Pandemic?

Health care generates a lot of waste that enters landfills, oceans, and incinerators and adversely affects the health of persons and communities close to waste processing and disposal areas. This article considers the nature and scope of individuals’ and organizations’…

How Should Responsibility for Proper Medication Disposal Be Shared?

Pharmaceutical companies’ capital, influence, and labor force well equip them to assume responsibility for public medication disposal programs. Government- and industry-funded campaigns for medication disposal do work, but responsibility often falls on local health care organizations to provide education and…