New Treatment for Bulimia

Drudge links to an article describing a new treatment for bulimia:
An Australian psychologist charged with indecently assaulting a patient told a court on Tuesday that forcing his female patient to wear a dog collar and call him master was within a psychologist's ethical guidelines.
Psychologist Bruce Beaton, 64, pleaded not guilty in the Western Australia District Court to four charges of indecently assaulting a 22-year-old woman in 2005, local media reported.
Beaton told the court he resorted to master-servant treatment with his bulimic patient because other methods had failed. He said he thought forcing the woman to wear a dog collar and call him master would build a more trusting relationship.
"I am not saying it would be all right if I hit her. I did not hit her," he said. The trial continues.
Interesting treatment. I guess it's good the psychologist didn't hit his patient. However, this is not a legitimate treatment and hopefully the psychologist will be convicted.

Baby Heroin

I was working at a prison in Alabama last week. Its hard for the inmates to obtain traditional drugs of abuse (marijuana, cocaine, heroin), so the inmates try to get high on prescribed medications. Controlled substances such as Ativan and Xanax are usually not prescribed in the prison; but the inmates can be quite creative and try to get high off of medications that are not traditionally considered addictive/abuseable. The antipsychotic Seroquel seems to be quite popular these days, and prisoners are calling it "baby heroin." In this prison, it is given to prisoners crushed so they can not trade it or sell it to other inmates. One prisoner, until she was caught and taken off of Seroquel, was in the habit of spitting the Seroquel tablets into her coffee and then selling the coffee.

I will be gone for the next several days

I am doing some locum tenens work at a women's prison in Alabama, so blogging will probably be non-existent from January 15-19.

Mississippi Medical Bloggers

I'm compiling a list of Mississippi medical bloggers. So far it's a short list. Please let me know if I've left anyone out.

Physicians:

Dr. Hebert
Just Practicing


Other:

MyHeartOnMySleeve

Why be a Geriatrician?

Kevin MD links to this article discussing the shortage of geriatricians:
Today, there is about one geriatrician for every 5,000 adults ages 65 and older. By 2030, the American Geriatrics Society estimates that while the population of older adults will have doubled to 70 million, the proportion of geriatricians will have dropped to one doctor per 7,665 people.
Geriatric care is a lot of fun, but it's never been glamorous and no one perceives it as fun. It's very challenging. There are a lot of issues to be dealt with. I think the real key is to find young physicians who share that interest and are willing to make that the focus of their careers. : makes going into geriatric care less appealing for medical students? : think it would be fair to say (that salary for a starting geriatrics specialist is) roughly a third of what a starting cardiologist would make. The typical medical school graduate is finishing med school with $100,000 to $200,000 in debt.
Other than those wanting to enhance an academic career, I can't understand why anyone would want to do a geriatrics fellowship (which is an additional 1 year beyond the standard 3 year internal medicine residency). Internal medicine residency training is sufficient for developing the necessary knowledge and skills to take care of geriatric patients.
For non-academic physicians, a geriatrics fellowship is an additional year of training (and receiving a low resident/fellow's salary) with no payoff at the end. In fact, because of low Medicare reimbursement, a geriatrician in private practice will make less money than a general internist who sees both young adults and geriatric patients.
Being a medical director of a nursing home can be profitable, but this can also be done by a general internist.
I'm all in favor of education and enjoy learning about about the wide field of medicine, but at some point a person needs to begin earning a living, and a geriatrics fellowship is an unnecessary delay in this process.

Overeating is like Drug Addiction

A recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences stated that overeating is like drug addiction. What do you think?
"The biggest challenge for me has been dropping my eating buddies and acquiring a new group of friends who don't eat."