Bod Boss

As a cold or the flu starts to get better, many people are hit with an annoying last phase: an irritating cough. Long after a sore throat and nasal congestion goes away, a cough can persist for days and even weeks. Sometimes it's caused by swollen a...

It was one of those 2 a.m. phone calls you really don't want to get.  I was a nursing administrator, and one of the departments for which I was responsible was Labor and Delivery. The nurse on the phone was upset. "We have a patient who is abo...

For anyone facing a challenging disease or condition, participating in a clinical trial may offer hope for a new and better treatment. It can also provide the emotional reward of being an important part of expanding scientific and medical knowledge,...

 Is deciding to get a second opinion something like looking at a box of chocolates? It's really common to resist the idea of getting another point of view about whether you should have a serious test or procedure, surgery, or take a particular...

For every drug you take, the benefits should always outweigh the risks. Every medication you take has at least a few potential side effects, some mild, some not so mild, and sometimes others that can be serious. Most side effects vary from person...

It's the phone call everybody wants to get.  "Your biopsy was negative." Time to celebrate? Yes.  But celebrate cautiously. Sometimes what comes back as a benign (non-cancerous) biopsy may be a false negative. In other words, the po...

What's worse than being sent to the hospital?  That's easy: Having to go right back after you've gone home. Yet studies show that almost 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital in the first 30 days after being discharg...