“Ugh, another pulled muscle?!?” Annalisa, who just entered her 34th week of pregnancy, stopped walking and sat down at a nearby bench to catch her breath. Her 4-year old daughter looked at her curiously. She had been growing inpatient, counting…
Blog
Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Nerve Block
Family physicians, internists, pain medicine physicians, and emergency room doctors frequently write for large amounts of opioids to treat acute and chronic pain. The difficulty with this approach to patient care is that heavy doses of narcotics often do not…
MACRA and MIPS 2018 Updates
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced significant updates with regards to its value-based care programs. Of these programs, MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, represents a highly innovative legislative measure to encourage quality care…
Labor Epidural and Maternal Temperature
Despite earlier controversies, it is now more widely accepted that epidural labor analgesia has a causal association with maternal hyperthermia and maternal fever. However, the issue is complex given the wide range of etiologies of maternal fever, and the criticisms…
Recent Trends in the Anesthesiology Workforce
Anesthesia practitioners include anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and anesthesia assistants. These providers often work together in teams to deliver perioperative care. Healthcare practices and facilities have flexibility in determining how they want to deploy anesthesia services including the structure…
Telehealth for Patient Care in Rural America
Approximately 20% of the U.S. population, totaling over 50 million people, lives in rural areas. Unfortunately, only 9% of practicing physicians serve these areas. The resulting lack of adequate access to care and resources has increased rural populations’ susceptibility to…
The Ethics of Anesthesiology: History and Origins
This post is part of a series exploring the issues of ethics in anesthesiology practice. When considering the ethics of anesthesiology practice, most people would think in the present tense. However, this aspect of anesthesiology has a storied history that…
Value Analysis and Anesthesia Management
As discussed previously, the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model has vast potential to disrupt the standards of anesthesia care. In a follow-up to that discussion, proposals in the anesthesiology community are now suggesting a value-based strategy to address efficiency and…
Recent Advances in Anesthesia
It would be difficult and presumptuous to try to cover all the recent advances in the field of anesthesia in one article, but a few new developments which have changed the way we manage our anesthetics deserve mention. Those included…
Management of Postdural Puncture Headache
Postdural Puncture Headache (PDPHA), as defined by the International Headache Society, is any headache that develops within 5 days of dural puncture and is not better explained by another cause. While the classic symptoms of PDPHA highlight a positional component…