How doctoring should be done – ePocrates
I had a bug land in my eye while running yesterday. I thought I had taken it out, but I woke up in the middle of the night with my eye sealed shut by eye goo. I flushed out the bug, but by the end of the day, my eye was still irritable and very red.
My doctor looked at my eye and said that it looked infected and said she would prescribe a topical antibiotic. She then told me that they don’t see eye infections all that often and pulled out a PDA and confirmed the proper dilution of the antibiotic prescription.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, but it is such an obvious thing for caregivers to use. Maybe its because doctors are slightly technophobic or perhaps they don’t like admitting they are uncertain but this seems like a far superior model than prescribing drugs on memory. I’ve got to imagine that there are some compelling statistics to be found on lives saved or reduced prescription error rates, etc.
She used a database from epocrates. I love the concept. I of course want it networked, databased and analyzed but this is a great start.
