Commentaries

More information is available on the teratogenicity of psychiatric medications than perhaps any other class of medications women use during pregnancy, with the most data available for antidepressants. To date, many would argue that no signals for significant teratogenicity across psychiatric medications have been identified – with a few important exceptions... »

Dr. Andy Baldwin’s first visit to Kenya was for an endurance event – an ultramarathon that served as a fundraiser for vulnerable children in Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. He chose to return last fall for a different type of endurance event: A month of medical practice and teaching as part of his family practice residency.

"Being in the Navy, I... »

Okay, we admit it – even we are becoming a bit jaded with all of the attention being paid to meaningful use. So we thought we’d give ourselves and our readers a break this month and instead write about a topic that gets far too little attention: optimization.

This is the concept of using electronic health records in ways that actually fulfill their... »

Visitors to my office often ask about the secret to maintaining "such a marvelous" 11-person staff. "You must pay them a fortune," they say.

Yes, they are compensated fairly; but that’s not why they stay. I know for a fact that many of them have turned down higher salaries at big clinics. Staff turnover is essentially nonexistent. (My... »

Newborn screening has long been considered one of the most successful public health programs in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recognized improvements in newborn screening technology and the endorsement of the uniform newborn screening panel, which has led to life-saving treatments and interventions, as one of its Ten... »

Fifteen years ago the FDA established a registry for clinical trials (www.clinicaltrials.gov) so that scientific investigators and the general public would have a ready source of information about medical research – planned, ongoing, and completed. In 2004 the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced that their journals would... »

When I trained in pediatrics, education about children’s oral health for pediatricians was lacking, especially for children under age 3. At that time it wasn’t common practice to look at the teeth and oral cavity; we looked beyond those structures to the throat, as we assumed the teeth were someone else’s responsibility.

However, data and experience have... »