Road rage in the operation room

In a recent article at the Boston Globe, they report on a serious matter when it comes to doctors in operation rooms. In some hospitals, there are frequent outbursts from doctors that include fits of swearing, yelling and throwing objects in the emergency room. The Globe paralleled this behavior to road rage. According to a study done at Vanderbilt, 4 to 6% of doctors have frequent outbursts in the operation room. The study found that the more outbursts doctors have, the more likely the hospital is to be sued due to the fact that bad behavior in the surgery room is often connected to medical errors.

So some hospitals are stepping up and solving the problem. The Joint Commission is mandating that all hospitals and nursing homes adopt a zero tolerance policy by January 1 that will include rules and processes on: including codes of conduct, ways to encourage staff to report bad behavior, and a process for helping and, if necessary, disciplining offenders.

Higher Cigarette Taxes

As defined in the A Healthy Living blog, In the beginning of April, Massachusetts is once again looking to increase cigarette taxes. Their goal would be to add a $1 tax to every box sold. This would lead to over $150 million revenue for the Massachusetts government.

At the same time, the Boston Globe also published why higher taxes on cigarettes would help the state:

-This would discourage children to smoke (Expensive prices would detour them)
-Lower health risk due to fewer smokers
-Addiction cycles would be broken
-Massachusetts spends over $3.5 billion dollars a year annually taking care of smokers. So, this expenditure would go down and the smokers would in theory be paying for their health care in advance when they buy a pack of cigarettes.