Contributing Writer
Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine
John Damianos is a fourth year medical student at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, Lebanon, NH class of 2020. In 2016, he graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and neuroscience and a minor in French. He enjoys playing tennis, cooking, and studying Byzantine chant in his spare time. After graduating medical school, John would like to pursue a career in internal medicine, eventually specializing in gastroenterology.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine is particularly appealing to those who wish to take their health into their own hands and remove costly, time-consuming physicians from the equation. Crucial, however, is the fact that these companies are independently run and thus are not regulated by any governing scientific body.
In 2012, Target’s marketing team was attacked: first by an enraged father, then by a storm of reporters and finally by social media. His daughter received a mail advertisement focused on baby-related products.
Medical decision-making is a game of probabilities. Sapper Morton reminds us in Blade Runner 2049, “You newer models are happy scraping … because you’ve never seen a miracle.” In the real world, miracles do not exist.
It has become more and more evident with time that the health care delivery system in the United States is riddled with issues, which have led to many disagreements about policy because there is no clear and universally acceptable solution to our problems.
“Telestroke,” a telemedicine approach to acute stroke care, is revolutionizing how we treat our country’s third leading cause of death. Leveraging modern communication technology and the combined experience of skilled neurologists, Telestroke aims to benefit patients in rural areas who are often at the highest risk of ischemic stroke but have the least access to treatment.
Humanity’s unnerving cruelty is perhaps only balanced by its kindness and innovation. We will see on which side of the scale CRISPR, a remarkable genome-editing tool and one of the most exciting scientific innovations of the 21st century, is going to land on, for land it certainly will.
We are a technology-obsessed society. Many of us most likely have experienced that disoriented feeling when accidentally leaving the house without our phone.
What did your past few months look like? Did your overflowing email inbox, the patient write-up you forgot to turn in, the lagging research project you started summer of your first year and those long nights cramming First Aid come to mind? If so, you’re in the right place.
Parallels are often drawn between the fields of aviation and medicine. It has been said that the number of hospital-related preventable deaths in the United States alone is equivalent to 20 large airplane crashes, with no survivors, each week. With the advancements made in flight safety, doctors are now looking to the field of aviation to improve patient safety.
Video games, which have been linked to childhood obesity, aggression and poor school performance, are currently being used in the training of surgical residents. Most of the reported effects of video games in the media appear to center upon the alleged negative consequences: video game addiction, increased aggressiveness and various medical and psychosocial effects.
With all the recent advancements in the field of technology, every major electronics company is eager to develop the “next best thing.” Currently near the front of the technology boom is Google with the development of Google Glass.
As medicine moves into the 21st century, how will medical education adapt? Also, what is digital literacy, and what does it mean for the physician of tomorrow? Today, we have Dr. Bryan Vartabedian from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. When he’s not doing scopes as a pediatric gastroenterologist, Dr. Vartabedian blogs about the intersection of medicine and technology at 33Charts and can be found on Twitter at @Doctor_V.
Host of History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training and in-Training Staff Member
Johns Hopkins University
Kevin is an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University currently conducting quality improvement and patient safety research at Columbia University Medical Center.
History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training
History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training is a discussion with students, clinicians and thought leaders at the forefront of medicine. At a time when the role of the physician, the landscape of the health care system, and the impact of technology on patient care are rapidly evolving, History & Physical aspires to answer the question, "What does it mean to be a medical student of the 21st century?"
