Essential Medical Facts Every Clinician Should Know: To Prevent Medical Errors, Pass Board Examinations and Provide Informed Patient Care

373 Pages·2011·3.31 MB·English

by  Robert B. Taylor (auth.)

Essential Medical Facts
Every Clinician Should Know

Robert B. Taylor
Essential Medical Facts
Every Clinician
Should Know
To Prevent Medical Errors, Pass Board
Examinations and Provide Informed
Patient Care
Robert B. Taylor
Department of Family Medicine
School of Medicine
Oregon Health & Sciences University
3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road
Portland, Oregon, 97239
USA
[email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-7873-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7874-5
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7874-5
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York,
NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in
connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software,
or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they
are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are
subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to
press, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any
errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Practicing Clinicians everywhere, who
translate current research into informed and
evidence-based patient care
While
Pondering undiff. symptoms and signs,
Help the suffering.....;
Reporting progress and....;
Avoiding diagnositic....
And keeping up with essential....

It might be illusory to imagine that we can learn from the mistakes of others, but
the alternative is to make them all ourselves.
Stephens GG. A family doctor’s rules for clinical conversations.
J Am Board of Fam Pract 1994; 7(2): 179-181.
Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing happened.
Winston Churchill. Quoted in: Meyers MA. Happy Accidents.
New York: Arcade Books; 2007. Page 19.
#####
Clinical abilities, mature wisdom and human compassion can all help make us good
clinicians.
Knowing essential medical facts can help us avoid mistakes.
vii

Preface
Medical textbooks, continuing education programs and reference sources all
provide the knowledge base needed for competent medical practice. This book
presents the rest of what you need to know to be an outstanding clinician. Essential
Medical Facts goes beyond basic teachings, presenting bits of medical knowledge
that can help prevent diagnostic blunders and therapeutic missteps. After all,
mastery of disease templates and principles of management can make you a good
doctor, but that is not enough; you also need your arsenal of discrete medical facts.
Essential Medical Facts may just allow you to sidestep some of medicine’s many
hidden landmines, such as the Achilles tendinitis and possible rupture that can
occasionally follow use of a quinolone antibiotic.
I have been a medical writer and book editor for more than three decades, much
of this time spent compiling huge – think of a volume weighing 10 pounds – clinical
reference books, a publication model now becoming an anachronism. Today clini-
cians hunting for the answers to questions can find more timely information on line,
and they can find it faster than searching the index and then the numbered pages of
a heavy tome. But medical web sources – both the subscription reference sites and
PubMed – often frustrate us when we don’t know what question to ask. Enter the
“topical book,” the book of facts, containing snippets of information that really
should be in your memory bank and mine, and that may well be somewhere in the
traditional reference sources, but will remain hidden there unless we think to look.
The answer to retrieving medical facts is not a book of answers, but a book of
prompts. Essential Medical Facts is just such a topical book.
Do you need this book? Here is a quiz that can help you decide.
• What types of migraine headache should not be treated with 5-hydroxytriptam-
ine receptor agonists such as sumatriptan (Imitrex)?
• What should you suspect when you find anemia in a long distance runner?
• Can you name an herbal remedy that can decrease the INR (International
Normalized Ratio), and thereby reduce the effectiveness of warfarin (Coumadin)
anticoagulation?
• Do you know the clue that can help distinguish the neurogenic claudication of
spinal stenosis from vascular claudication as a cause of pain in the lower
extremities?
ix