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A Supreme Courtship

The whole country is still abuzz about last week's huge legal news, the landmark case that is likely to play out through November and whose repercussions will eventually touch every American. To the relief of so many of us, Katie Holmes is finally filing for divorce from Tom Cruise. Admit it, the suspense was killing you.

Pediatricians have many judges to thank this week, and not only the five Supreme Court Justices who voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act. We can also thank the Federal District Court that just issued a permanent injunction in the unpronounceable-yet-critical case of Wollschlaeger vs. Farmer, better known to pediatricians as the "Florida Gun Gag Law." Not only does the decision protect Florida pediatricians' right to counsel patients about a hazard that accounts for 1 out of every 25 pediatric trauma center admissions, but it should earn the judge a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records for overturning what has to be The World’s Stupidest Law.

New research adds fuel to the debate over whether parents who spank their kids should be put in time out. A group of Canadian researchers studied whether adults who recall their parents pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, or hitting them in childhood were more likely to suffer from mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and personality disorders. After all the math, such punishments seemed to account for between 2% and 7% of the studied mental health diagnoses.

In my opinion, proponents of corporal punishment would probably quickly point out that 93% to 98% of kids whose parents push, grab, shove, slap, or hit them do just great, and they may be even more likely to become successful talk radio personalities. Critics also attacked the methodology, pointing out that the study relied purely on adult subjects’ recollection of their childhoods.

Clearly the only way to settle this debate is to embark on a 20-year prospective trial in which half of parents are randomized to push, grab, shove, slap, or hit their children and the other half are assigned to move to one of the 24 countries that have outlawed spanking. Of course the parents who move would have to contend with really boring talk radio.

©koya79/Fotolia.com
    

Finally, in yet another blow to the egos of mid-career doctors (ahem), it turns out medical residents in training can do our jobs just as well as we can, provided they're adequately supervised. A meta-analysis of 97 studies of resident training and patient outcomes did find that residents’ performance tended to improve with time, becoming equal to that of fully trained physicians around the day they're fully trained. Future studies will examine whether experienced clinicians' jobs can be performed equally well by adequately supervised robots, rhesus monkeys, and GI Joe dolls with the Kung Fu grip. Fortunately by the time these studies are completed I will have moved on from medicine to a lucrative career training monkeys in the practice of divorce law. I have a tip there’s a famous client who might be interested.

David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C. and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. 

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The whole country is still abuzz about last week's huge legal news, the landmark case that is likely to play out through November and whose repercussions will eventually touch every American. To the relief of so many of us, Katie Holmes is finally filing for divorce from Tom Cruise. Admit it, the suspense was killing you.

Pediatricians have many judges to thank this week, and not only the five Supreme Court Justices who voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act. We can also thank the Federal District Court that just issued a permanent injunction in the unpronounceable-yet-critical case of Wollschlaeger vs. Farmer, better known to pediatricians as the "Florida Gun Gag Law." Not only does the decision protect Florida pediatricians' right to counsel patients about a hazard that accounts for 1 out of every 25 pediatric trauma center admissions, but it should earn the judge a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records for overturning what has to be The World’s Stupidest Law.

New research adds fuel to the debate over whether parents who spank their kids should be put in time out. A group of Canadian researchers studied whether adults who recall their parents pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, or hitting them in childhood were more likely to suffer from mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and personality disorders. After all the math, such punishments seemed to account for between 2% and 7% of the studied mental health diagnoses.

In my opinion, proponents of corporal punishment would probably quickly point out that 93% to 98% of kids whose parents push, grab, shove, slap, or hit them do just great, and they may be even more likely to become successful talk radio personalities. Critics also attacked the methodology, pointing out that the study relied purely on adult subjects’ recollection of their childhoods.

Clearly the only way to settle this debate is to embark on a 20-year prospective trial in which half of parents are randomized to push, grab, shove, slap, or hit their children and the other half are assigned to move to one of the 24 countries that have outlawed spanking. Of course the parents who move would have to contend with really boring talk radio.

©koya79/Fotolia.com
    

Finally, in yet another blow to the egos of mid-career doctors (ahem), it turns out medical residents in training can do our jobs just as well as we can, provided they're adequately supervised. A meta-analysis of 97 studies of resident training and patient outcomes did find that residents’ performance tended to improve with time, becoming equal to that of fully trained physicians around the day they're fully trained. Future studies will examine whether experienced clinicians' jobs can be performed equally well by adequately supervised robots, rhesus monkeys, and GI Joe dolls with the Kung Fu grip. Fortunately by the time these studies are completed I will have moved on from medicine to a lucrative career training monkeys in the practice of divorce law. I have a tip there’s a famous client who might be interested.

David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C. and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. 

The whole country is still abuzz about last week's huge legal news, the landmark case that is likely to play out through November and whose repercussions will eventually touch every American. To the relief of so many of us, Katie Holmes is finally filing for divorce from Tom Cruise. Admit it, the suspense was killing you.

Pediatricians have many judges to thank this week, and not only the five Supreme Court Justices who voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act. We can also thank the Federal District Court that just issued a permanent injunction in the unpronounceable-yet-critical case of Wollschlaeger vs. Farmer, better known to pediatricians as the "Florida Gun Gag Law." Not only does the decision protect Florida pediatricians' right to counsel patients about a hazard that accounts for 1 out of every 25 pediatric trauma center admissions, but it should earn the judge a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records for overturning what has to be The World’s Stupidest Law.

New research adds fuel to the debate over whether parents who spank their kids should be put in time out. A group of Canadian researchers studied whether adults who recall their parents pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, or hitting them in childhood were more likely to suffer from mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and personality disorders. After all the math, such punishments seemed to account for between 2% and 7% of the studied mental health diagnoses.

In my opinion, proponents of corporal punishment would probably quickly point out that 93% to 98% of kids whose parents push, grab, shove, slap, or hit them do just great, and they may be even more likely to become successful talk radio personalities. Critics also attacked the methodology, pointing out that the study relied purely on adult subjects’ recollection of their childhoods.

Clearly the only way to settle this debate is to embark on a 20-year prospective trial in which half of parents are randomized to push, grab, shove, slap, or hit their children and the other half are assigned to move to one of the 24 countries that have outlawed spanking. Of course the parents who move would have to contend with really boring talk radio.

©koya79/Fotolia.com
    

Finally, in yet another blow to the egos of mid-career doctors (ahem), it turns out medical residents in training can do our jobs just as well as we can, provided they're adequately supervised. A meta-analysis of 97 studies of resident training and patient outcomes did find that residents’ performance tended to improve with time, becoming equal to that of fully trained physicians around the day they're fully trained. Future studies will examine whether experienced clinicians' jobs can be performed equally well by adequately supervised robots, rhesus monkeys, and GI Joe dolls with the Kung Fu grip. Fortunately by the time these studies are completed I will have moved on from medicine to a lucrative career training monkeys in the practice of divorce law. I have a tip there’s a famous client who might be interested.

David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP, is vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C. and is an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. 

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Needles, Dr. David Hill, spanking, Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court, Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise, divorce, Guinness Book Of World Records, Florida Gun Gag Law, Wollschlaeger vs. Farmer, GI Joe, kung Fu, monkeys
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Needles, Dr. David Hill, spanking, Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court, Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise, divorce, Guinness Book Of World Records, Florida Gun Gag Law, Wollschlaeger vs. Farmer, GI Joe, kung Fu, monkeys
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