Tag: Mukherjee

Reading of the Week: Suicide Notes & Lessons Learned – the New CJP Paper; Also, Mukherjee on Case Reports

From the Editor

Many people didn’t write one. But some did. The notes were usually short, typically only 600 words or so, and were often handwritten. Some talked about their illness; others didn’t.

What lessons can we learn from these suicide notes?

In the first selection, University of Toronto psychiatry resident Dr. Zainab Furqan and her co-authors consider notes left by those who suicided in a paper just published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. They argue that we can learn from them, and offer clinical suggestions.

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In the second selection, Columbia University’s Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee argues that the obscure is relevant – he notes the decline and fall of the case report, and calls for its return.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Mukherjee on Why Checklists Save Lives – Except When They Don’t

From the Editor

“How could an idea that worked so effectively in so many situations fail to work in this one? The most likely answer is the simplest: Human behavior changed, but it didn’t change enough.”

Readings of the Week generally focus on psychiatric topics. But here’s a task for all of us in health care: improving the quality of care. This week, we look at a new essay written by oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. In it, he talks about the success of using checklists in reducing complications in some places – but not in others. The above quotation comes from this provocative essay.

checklist-850x476 Checklists: Shown to save lives, except when they don’t

Why do checklists work some of the time? In this Reading, we consider the essay, and the larger questions it raises.

DG

 

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