The measurement of blood pressure in the physician's office is subject to a number of observer errors and also to the "white-coat effect." Automatic devices that measure blood pressure without a human observer in the room can eliminate many of these problems. We argue for greater use of these devices in the physician's office.

The trainee in difficulty is someone who is either marginal or at risk of failing in his or her clinical performance. Dealing effectively with these learners can pose problems even for seasoned medical educators. This article discusses some of the common mistakes made by educators in dealing with the trainee in difficulty and offers suggestions for a systematic approach. Further, the roles of f...

The purpose of our research is the development of a new technology, teleimmersion, which will make possible 3D visual communication between people distributed over the globe. We are putting together a low-end, PC-based, affordable hardware system, and are developing the software for a teleimmersion node (T-node). The software is based on accurate polynocular stereo. We will describe a testbed f...

In an interesting article Wieteke van Dijk and colleagues argue that societal developments and values influence the practice of medicine, and thus can result in both medicalisation and overdiagnosis. They provide a convincing argument that overdiagnosis emerges in a social context and that it has socially constructed implications. However, they fail to show that overdiagnosis per se is socially...

Most physicians believe that to provide the best possible care to their patients, they must commit to continuous learning. For the most part, it appears the learning activities currently available to physicians do not provide opportunities for meaningful continuous learning. At the same time there have been increasing concerns about the quality of health care, and a variety of groups within org...

KEY FINDINGS Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2012 •Physician office visit rates for well care were lower for school-aged (those aged 6-11 years) children (31 per 100 population) and adolescents aged 12-17 years (29 per 100 population) than for younger children (349 and 74 per 100 population for children under age 1 year and 1-5 years, respectively). •Visit rates for well ...

The second step is information. It should be clear, simple and repetitive, keeping in mind that we only hear what interests us. Therefore, it is important to repeat and repeat, with different approaches, again and again. A well informed patient is better equipped to assume the treatment. The information is completely our responsibility; it should be verbal, written and visual1-3. It should be n...

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