I just spent 90 minutes reading every article in this week’s Grand Rounds, hosted beautifully at Chronic Babe. I loved the female-focused theme (of course!) and I thought that the articles that were submitted were just good across the board. Eve Harris at A Healthy Piece Of My Mind writes about how mammograms might not be as great as we like to think. I always enjoy viewpoints that run counter to conventional wisdom, and found Eve’s article and the studies she referenced very thought-provoking. Maureen Hayes writes about appreciating the things that she can do, rather than focusing on the things that illness has taken away from her. The Happy Hospitalist and InsureBlog both weighed in with female-theme-appropriate articles that will make you smile (and wonder if perhaps the two are related… does a smaller bank account trigger a 339.82? Maybe we’ll have to have a study about that too. And request that health insurance cover low balance-induced 339.82).
If you’re up for a little controversy, PalMD at White Coat Underground has written about conscience clauses that allow medical providers to refuse to to provide care if it conflicts with their personal beliefs. Read the article and then scroll through the comments to see lots of different view points on this issue. A very good point raised is that the conscience clauses tend to be invoked in matters of reproductive health. And overwhelmingly it ends up being women’s reproductive health issues that are impacted. Here in Colorado, a similar issue was raised last year concerning the sale of two Exempla hospitals to a Catholic organization. It’s a touchy subject with both sides 100% convinced that their own arguments are the only valid ones. And that makes for an interesting article and interesting comments. Since this is my article, I’ll weigh in with my own opinion: If you have a job that entails serving the general public (who have a wide range of beliefs that may be far different from your own) and your conscience prevents you from doing your job, you might be in the wrong profession.