Opinion | ‘Everyone Knows Surgeons Brag About Having Steady Hands’: What We Heard This Week

“Everyone knows surgeons brag about having steady hands, so we decided to put this to the test.” — Michael Drozd, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Leeds in England, discussing his research into the dexterity of surgeons versus other hospital staff.

“When a child has atopic dermatitis, his or her parents effectively have it as well.” — Brittany Craiglow, MD, of Yale University in Connecticut, discussing a study that showed parents of children with atopic dermatitis often lost sleep.

“If clinicians can accept that they’re human beings that have things to work on … we can try to reduce the impact of implicit biases on the care of patients.” — Austin Wesevich, MD, MPH, MS, of the University of Chicago, discussing clinician recall after biased handoffs.

“Patients can recover from post-COVID condition.” — Tom Farmen Nerli, MD, of Vestfold Hospital Trust in Norway, discussing an outpatient rehabilitation program for people with long COVID.

“A lot of patients will be like, ‘I can’t worry about my health. I gotta feed myself. I gotta get shelter for my family’.” — Anthony Gerber, PharmD, of New York City Health+Hospitals/Bellevue, on tackling barriers to improve access to long-acting HIV prevention for at-risk individuals.

“It’s important to consider how occupations may affect risk of death from Alzheimer’s disease.” — Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, on research showing that taxi and ambulance drivers had the lowest proportions of Alzheimer’s-related mortality.

“Since the price was steady, basically the acceleration is attributed to use and intensity increasing, and a lot of that is through private health insurance and Medicare.” — Anne Martin, of the CMS Office of the Actuary, explaining the 7.5% increase in health spending in 2023.