74 - R2D2
Bedside Rounds
What does it mean when a computer can make better medical decisions than a human? The progress in large language models, and in particular the popularity of ChatGPT, has brought these questions to the forefront in 2023, but we’ve been discussing this for over 50 years. In this episode, Dr. Shani Herzig and I are going all the way back to the early 1970s with the invention of AAPHELP, the first real clinical decision support system, and the first time doctors had to contemplate working with – or competing against – computer systems.
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73 - Seadragon
Bedside Rounds
What happens when a patient far from surgical care – say, at the bottom of the Pacific ocean on a submarine, or at a research base in Antarctica in the middle of the winter – develops a surgical abdomen? This dilemma was the impetus to build the first truly effective clinical decision support system – and to grapple with what it means when a computer can make better medical decisions than a doctor. In this episode, part one of three, we discuss the dramatic stories of appendectomies at Novolazarevskaya and aboard the submarine Seadragon. Also, there’s a brand new #AdamAnswers about the...
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72 - Problems
Bedside Rounds
American doctors spend the majority of their time during the day on the computer, either writing or reading notes about their patients; only a small fraction is spent with the human beings in their care. Technology itself – especially the electronic medical record – has often been blamed for this. But in this episode – a recorded grand rounds that I gave at the San Francisco VA in 2022 – I argue that this alienation has its roots in the way we’ve decided to organize clinical data, and the assumptions that we’ve made about the nature of medical care. In particular, I’m going to...
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71 - A Doctor's Work, part 2
Bedside Rounds
In the past episode, cultural and medical historians Lakshmi Krishnan and Mike Neuss discussed the history of the actual work of the doctor – Holmesian detective, data entry clerk, or something else altogether. In this episode, we conclude our discussion by talking about what type of metaphors are best suited for clinical work. Plus a brand new #AdamAnswers about the reason that American doctors are so obsessed with using, well, the # symbol in our notes.
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70 - A Doctor's Work
Bedside Rounds
What do doctors actually do? Are they Sherlockian detectives, hunting down obscure clues to solve intractable cases? Are they virtuosic experts, training for half a lifetime to bring the latest science to bear to cure disease? Or are they clerks, whose main job is to collect and enter data into the electronic health record? In this episode, Adam is joined by medical and cultural historians Lakshmi Krishnan and Mike Neuss to discuss the stories we tell about our own work – and how this often conflicts with the realities of clinical practice.
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69 - The Database
Bedside Rounds
How do doctors actually think? And if we can answer that, can we train a computer to do a better job? In the post-WW2 period, a group of iconoclastic physicians set about to redefine the nature and structure of clinical reasoning and tried to build a diagnostic machine. Though they would ultimately fail, their failure set the stage for the birth of the electronic health records, formalized the review of systems, and set up a metacognitive conflict that remains unresolved to this day. This episode, entitled “The Database,” is the second part of this on the history of diagnosis with Gurpreet...
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68 - The History
Bedside Rounds
Internal medicine physicians like to pride ourselves on our clinical reasoning – the ability to talk to any patient, pluck out seemingly random bits of information, and make a mystery diagnosis. But how does this actually work? In this episode, called The History, I’ll be joined by Gurpreet Dhaliwal as we explore the beginnings of our understanding on how clinical reasoning works – starting in the middle of the 19th century with polar tensions between two ways of approaching our patients that are still felt today. Along the way, we’ll talk about the American Civil War, Car Talk,...
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The Facemaker with Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris (#histmedconsultservice)
Bedside Rounds
Modern plastic surgery was born out of the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. In this episode, Adam interviews historian Lindsey Fitzharris about her new book The Facemaker, about the life of surgeon Harold Gillies and his quest to rebuild his patients' faces.
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67 - Fever on the Frontier
Bedside Rounds
In the early 19th century, a strange new illness, seemingly unknown to medicine, ravaged settler communities in the American Middle West. As fierce debates about this new disease, now called milk sickness, raged – was it from toxic swamp gasses? arsenic in the soil? infectious microorganisms? from the poor constitutions of the settlers – an irregular medicine woman named Dr. Anna and an indigenous Shawnee healer discovered the cause of the disease and successfully prevented it in their community. But their discovery went unheeded for over a half century. This is a live podcast that I gave...
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66 - Burnout
Bedside Rounds
Burnout seems to stalk healthcare workers; between a third and a half of doctors and nurses had symptoms of burnout BEFORE the COVID-19 pandemic. Major medical associations have recognized burnout as a serious problem and the condition is being added to ICD-11 as an “occupational phenomenon.” How has burnout gotten so bad? In this episode, the first #HistMedConsultService, I’m joined by historians of healthcare and emotions Agnes Arnold-Forster and Sam Schotland to historicize burnout.
info_outlineIn August of 1918, a horrific second wave of the Spanish Flu crashed across the world. In this episode, the third of a four-part series exploring hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19, I’ll explore this single moment in time, through the mysterious origins of the Spanish Flu and historiographical controversies, scientific missions to mass burial sites in remote Alaskan villages, the ill-fated journey of the HMS Mantua, debates about how to count victims of a pandemic, and the mystery behind Pfeiffer’s bacillus. Plus a new #AdamAnswers about that annoying yellow on blue powerpoint template so common in the medical field!
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- Oxford, J. S. & Gill, D. A possible European origin of the Spanish influenza and the first attempts to reduce mortality to combat superinfecting bacteria: an opinion from a virologist and a military historian. Hum Vacc Immunother 15, 2009–2012 (2019).
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- Patterson, S. W. & Williams, F. E. PFEIFFER’S BACILLUS AND INFLUENZA. Lancet 200, 806–807 (1922).
- Taubenberger, J. K. & Morens, D. M. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Legacy. Csh Perspect Med a038695 (2019) doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a038695.
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- Heinz, E. The return of Pfeiffer’s bacillus: Rising incidence of ampicillin resistance in Haemophilus influenzae. Microb Genom 4, (2018).
- Barry, J. M. The site of origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its public health implications. J Transl Med 2, 3 (2004).
- Johnson, N. P. A. S. & Mueller, J. Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918-1920 “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic. B Hist Med 76, 105–115 (2002).
- Tomkins SM, Colonial Administration in British Africa during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines. Vol. 28, No. 1 (1994), pp. 60-83 (24 pages)
- Qiang Liu et al, The cytokine storm of severe influenza and development of immunomodulatory therapy. Cell Mol Immunol. 2016 Jan; 13(1): 3–10.
- Spreeuwenberg et al. Reassessing the Global Mortality Burden of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.Am J Epidemiol . 2018 Dec 1;187(12):2561-2567. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwy191.
- R. F. J. Pfeiffer: Vorläufige Mittheilungen über den Erreger der Influenza. Deutsche medicinische Wochenschrift, Berlin, 1892, 18: 28. Die Aetiologie der Influenza. Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten, 1893, 13: 357-386.