There’s no doubt that the ability to offer patients immunization against a deadly virus would be a good thing for urgent care. Patients who have never visited your facility before may be encouraged to step inside for the first time, thereby getting a close-up view of how professional your team is and leaving with a peace of mind they may have been lacking for months.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its guidelines Tuesday on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans don't need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers. And those who are unvaccinated can go outside without masks in some situations, too.
It’s a conversation I’ve had endless times. One that I’ve honed and refined stepwise over time, and one that my patients often tell me they hadn’t considered before: the appropriate use and overuse of antibiotics. And right now, with patients hyper-focused on healthy immune systems, medical providers are uniquely positioned to build antibiotic stewardship into our diagnostic process and significantly increase resistance awareness nationwide.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, hospitals and health system leaders already are trying to apply lessons derived from their responses. An obvious lesson for many is the desire of patients for more treatment location options.
Physicians have seen a deterioration in their patients’ health during the pandemic, including with respect to underlying chronic conditions, according to a new survey.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, hospitals learned all that they were capable of. With a staggering number of patients testing their capabilities, healthcare workers heroically rose to the occasion. At the same time, this unprecedented situation exposed some of the inefficiencies inherent in even the best healthcare systems.
As hospitals and surgery centers navigate to resume elective and non-urgent surgical procedure volumes, there is heightened concern that the continued use of opioids for pain management before, during and after a procedure may perpetuate the current rise in opioid-related deaths. Similarly, the use of general anesthesia potentially exposes physicians and staff to viral contamination when intubating a patient, releasing aerosols and droplets, which is a primary mode of transmission of COVID-19.
Imaging centers and group practices that are reopening during the continued presence of COVID-19 and the partial lockdown are faced with new challenges regarding patient safety and care. Many patients postponed nonurgent imaging procedures, resulting in a backlog of imaging studies.
As the Covid-19 pandemic reshapes how medicine is practiced in the U.S., one iconic tool could be relegated to the dustbin of medical history: the stethoscope. For generations, there has been no better physician archetype than the quintessential black rubber stethoscope donned confidently over a crisp white coat.
A clearer picture of the effects of COVID-19 on the eyes of infected patients is emerging in new data from Hubei province, China. Researchers there have found ocular manifestations including epiphora, conjunctival congestion, and other conditions occur commonly in patients with confirmed COVID-19.
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