medgremlin

I'm a 3rd year medical student and I've already been caught off-guard a few times by the WILD medical misinformation my patients talk about, and figured that I should probably get ahead of it so that I can have some kind of response prepared. (Or know what the hell they've OD'd on or taken that is interfering with their actual medications)

I'm setting up a dummy tablet with a new account that isn't tied to me in any reasonable way to collect medical misinformation from. I'm looking at adding tik tok, instagram, twitter, reddit, and facebook accounts to train the algorithms to show medical misinformation. Are there any other social media apps or websites I should add to scrape for medical misinformation?

Also, any pointers on which accounts to look for on those apps to get started? I have an instagram account for my artwork and one for sharing accurate medical information, but I've trained my personal algorithm to not show me all the complete bullshit for the sake of my blood pressure. (And I have never used tik tok before, so I have no goddamn clue how that app works)

I wrote an essay (with sources! and data!) about what cutting Medicaid actually means because people don't have good perspective on it.

I'm working on creating a little social media presence for medical communication and education, and that includes a little substack where I've been posting some essays on my experiences in medicine. I would really appreciate any feedback folks have to offer or suggestions for topics that might be interesting to read about.

(I'm holding off on posting some of my spicier opinion pieces until I've graduated from medical school and gotten into residency, but I do try to be candid in my writing.)

I really have no idea what we can do as medical professionals to protect our pregnant patients. I try not to be pessimistic, but if H5N1 becomes another pandemic, I'm not very confident that Trump or those of his ilk in other countries are going to do anything useful about it.

This is a very small case series, but there aren't that many cases to study (yet). I still find it to be very concerning, even if it is a very small sample size.

I'm currently on my pediatrics rotation and on my first day in clinic, I had about 40% of families decline vaccinations. For the last visit of the day, the patient was a 3 week old coming in for her newborn followup and her parents said that they were against all vaccinations.

I asked them to tell me what their concerns were and spent an hour debunking conspiracy theories and answering all the questions they had. By the end of the discussion, they agreed to look at the CDC fact sheets for the recommended childhood vaccinations for the first year of life and said they would look at doing a delayed vaccination schedule at least. They wanted specific numbers and data about complication rates, but I didn't have that on hand. They seemed okay with my explanation that the data is everyone walking around that got all their childhood vaccinations and are doing fine.

Now, as a medical student, my time is basically worthless and I can absolutely sit there for an hour and answer questions, but I won't be able to do that in practice. I'd love any suggestions on how to compress that discussion (or confirmation that I'd just have to schedule those appointments at the end of the day and spend the hour.)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23719065

Summary

ProPublica investigates health insurers’ reliance on controversial doctors to deny mental health treatment.

Highlighting Emily Dwyer’s case, it details United Healthcare’s rejection of coverage for her anorexia treatment, despite evidence she was gravely ill.

Courts have criticized insurers for “arbitrary and capricious” denials, with judges pointing to factual errors and dismissive reviews by company-hired psychiatrists.

While some families, like the Dwyers, fought back in court, most lack resources to challenge insurers.

Critics call for reforms as denials often worsen health outcomes and highlight systemic issues in mental health care access.

Folk music/bluegrass has a long history of producing very poignant protest music, and this song/artist is no exception. The song does a good job of conveying a quick summary of where we are and how we got here (and it's a delightfully catchy tune!)

This might be a good thing to share with folks who aren't quite getting the message as it's a pleasant way to share the information and is less than 2 minutes long.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/20278273

This is a great article written by Robert Evans of 'Behind the Bastards' fame that goes into Luigi's background, social media presence, and apparent ideologies.

We all have had patients with chronic pain, we all know someone with chronic pain, and some of us unfortunately have chronic pain. We know how horrible it can make someone's life, and how much worse life can be if your insurance just keeps denying anything that could help.

Edit: Here's a link to what is most likely the real manifesto: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

Ken Klippenstein is a very reliable journalist and this version of the manifesto contains the snippets that have been released by law enforcement. Also, considering the thing was hand-written, that very long version involving his mom is dubious. (And there’s not any good evidence that his mom is in anything besides decent/good health)