Author's posts
Are antibiotics needed for your child with an ear infection?
The common practice in this country (although not everywhere — Europe, for example) has long been to treat all acute middle ear infections (otitis media) with antibiotics. This is not necessarily needed. We now know that for many children another…
Disproving the false claims of febrile seizures after vaccines
A seizure in response to a fever, called a febrile seizure, is an extremely common event in childhood. They affect 2 to 5 percent of children between 6 months and five years of age and have a peak incidence between 12 and 18 months of age. They general…
How a Minnesota Supreme Court decision could affect curbside consults
“In a case that could have wide-reaching implications for medical practice in Minnesota, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling on April 17 in the case of Warren v. Dinter holding that the existence of a physician-patient relationship is not…
The problem of disbelieving doctors
All good doctors learn to filter what parents say to them during history taking, to examine each parental statement for reliability, likelihood, and sheer outlandishness. Parents of sick children are a cross-section of humanity and, like all of us, var…
The physician who is a poor conversationalist
This article concerns what I call the poor conversationalist. There are several common versions of this, and all of them have corresponding parallels in nonmedical settings. Often the most basic difficulty is one of manner. A good conversationalist is …
When doctors are poor explainers
A physician, like anyone, can be a poor explainer of things for several reasons, but foremost among these is the tendency to use medical jargon. This is not a problem unique to doctors. When I take my car in for repairs, I often must ask the mechanic t…
Important new information in the new information the tragic cases of child abuse
Like many pediatric intensivists, I care from time to time for victims of child abuse in the form of what is often called “shaken baby syndrome.” This syndrome is a characteristic constellation of finds that happen when a strong person grasps a child a…
A disturbing study about children and guns
Children are relatively healthy overall. Although 25% of the American population is under the age of 19, only 2% of annual deaths occur in this age group. There was a time when the contributions of diseases to pediatric death rates were much higher. De…
Be careful of assigning the diagnosis of ADHD to young children just entering school
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common diagnosis in children today, and is increasingly a diagnosis assigned to adults, too. ADHD is a real thing, despite some having some skeptics and a few outright denialists; differences in brai…
