Just how do diagnosing physicians or physician-scientists see the world when they walk down the street? How is that different from what most of us see?
That street-level view is just one of the threads this blog will cover. The Doctor’s Tablet blog will also take a global view, examining Einstein’s unique international focus on cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, aging, HIV and learning disabilities.
The Doctor’s Tablet will highlight the latest medical and research developments and also seek to provide context and perspective—exploring the “how” and “why” of a doctor’s decisions— taking you inside the mind of a doctor and the human realities of what has become a sophisticated but complicated medical machine.
New therapies, biologic drugs, and life-extending technologies have revolutionized both our quality and our length of life. Understanding these developments and putting them into effective and compassionate research and clinical practice is the mission of Einstein’s doctors and medical teams, many of whom have clinical appointments at Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital for Einstein, Jacobi Medical Center, and five other hospital affiliates in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn.
But doctors are human. Despite their best judgment and the high expectations of society and their patients they don’t have all the answers. Sometimes they make mistakes. The blog will provide a glimpse into the contemplation and process of making difficult choices and offer a window into the personal dynamics that forge complex doctor-patient relationships.
We hope you find this blog entertaining, interesting and thought provoking.
In case you’re wondering why we chose to name the blog The Doctor’s Tablet—here’s the reasoning.
From the earliest days of medicine, “tablets” have been part of a doctor’s armament. In Mesopotamia, physicians etched their findings on stone tablets that gave way to plant-based papyrus. Modern paper later became the recording medium of choice—with doctors writing prescriptions by the millions for an assortment of tablets. In today’s technological world, more doctors are using computerized tablets and apps to manage their practices. Since being a doctor is part science, part art form—the name The Doctor’s Tablet seems fitting.