"Health & Medical News"

Over a flauta and a chicken-spinach enchilada, Brandon Bolfing and Shahed “Sky” Izaddoost took a breather from their final year at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston to celebrate their Match results with friends and family at a Mexican restaurant.

“This is the first place we went in medical school,” Bolfing said. “And it will be the last now that we’ve matched.”

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From:
Treatment Research Institute
600 Public Ledger Building, 150 S. Independence Mall West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: (215) 399-0980
http://www.tresearch.org

Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.

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Depressed medical residents make six times more medication errors than residents who are not depressed, according to a U.S. study published online Feb. 7 in the British Medical Journal.

“Depression is a significant problem for residents as well as for their patients,” said lead study author Amy Fahrenkopf, MD, MPH. “The fact that it’s a problem for both needs to be addressed.”

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A new poll finds that 58 percent of Wyoming residents approve of raising the state’s beer tax by 4.5 cents per liter in order to fund addiction treatment and prevention programs, the Billings Gazette reported Jan. 29.

The poll of 625 registered voters, conducted on behalf of the Casper Star-Tribune, also found that 84 percent of residents opposed raising the state tax on gasoline and diesel fuel by 10 cents per gallon.

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A survey by the AIDS Project of Central Iowa found that most of the Democratic candidates for president said they would support needle exchange programs to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among injection-drug users, Medical News Today reported Nov. 30.

Each candidate was asked, “Do you support access to sterile syringes, as a means of protecting public health, by lifting the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange?” Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Sen. John Edwards, and Sen. Joseph Biden all answered “yes” to the question.

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Residents are vulnerable to making errors that stem from teamwork breakdowns, especially a lack of attending supervision, according to a study in the Oct. 22 Archives of Internal Medicine.

In response, some experts said residencies should focus on better supervision, along with improved team communications. One went so far as to call for a new model of resident training and patient care. Others disagreed, saying residencies had improved such issues since the study’s data were compiled and did not need significant restructuring.

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Earl Dodge, a perennial presidential candidate for the Prohibition Party, has died at age 74, the Summit (Co.) Daily News reported Nov. 8.

Dodge, a resident of Lakewood, Co., was involved in the Prohibition Party since the 1930s. He won the party’s nomination for president in every campaign since 1984, and was preparing for the 2008 campaign when he died.

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Police in Denver kept arresting people for marijuana possession even after voters passed a measure making it legal for adults to have an ounce of the drug or less, so advocates are now pushing another ballot item that would order police to make marijuana enforcement their lowest priority.

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Fourth-year medical student Teresa Sandoval-Phillips wanted to attend a residency open house at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, Calif., but the three-hour drive each way and a busy schedule made it difficult. Fortunately for her, she was able to log onto a live webcast of the September event, joining 59 other Internet visitors and 80 students who came in person to see what Kaiser’s residencies had to offer.

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President Bush today signed a comprehensive Food and Drug Administration bill that focuses on prescription drug safety reforms.  The bill holds the prescription drug industry more accountable for the safety of their products by requiring them to publicly disclose drug safety studies, even the ones that show their medicines in an unflattering light.  It also increases the budget for drug safety reviews at the Food and Drug Administration. 

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