Videos
1. The Right Care – a parody of the great 1985 Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” – The Right Care video idea came from the concept laid out in the excellent Lancet Right Care series from January 2017. Everybody needs/wants the Right Care – we all know the problems, we have a pretty good idea how to solve it, so let’s just get it done.
2. Treat You Better – a parody of the 2016 Shawn Mendes song “Treat You Better” – Many pay-for performance initiatives in health care have some major limitations – most importantly P4P initiatives typically forget that individual patients should be involved in heath care decision-making activities.
3. End of Guidelines – a parody of the Traveling Wilburys classic song. Chronic disease state guidelines (blood pressure/lipids/glucose/bone density) do not provide clinicians with enough balanced information to do shared decision-making. This is a problem that needs to be fixed ASAP.
4. MedStopper – a parody of the Beatles song Day Tripper. Starting medications is like the bliss of marriage and stopping them is like the agony of divorce. That’s the completely wrong concept. Let MedStopper show you how to do it right.
5. Bridge Over Diagnosis – a parody of the Simon and Garfunkel classic Bridge Over Troubled Water. Overdiagnosis is an important health care issue and hopefully this video highlights a number of the issues around this important problem.
6. Choosing Wisely – a parody of the infectious Pharrell Williams song “Happy” – choose wisely when it comes to making health care decisions and if you choose wisely it will make you happy.
7. Eat Mediterranean – a parody of the Eagles’ song Hotel California – eat food you enjoy, that you tolerate and choose food based on the best available evidence for health.
8. Bohemian Polypharmacy – a parody of Queen’s classic song Bohemian Rhapsody – a song all about polypharmacy – taking more medicines than are clinically indicated.
9. Viva La Evidence – a parody of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida all about evidence-based healthcare – a little bit about the history of evidence and then the key principles.
10. Tom Hanks and Type 2 Diabetes – an evidence based discussion I would like to have with Mr. Hanks – Tom Hanks surprised many of his fans by announcing in October 2013, on national TV, that he had been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. Unfortunately, type-2 diabetes is sometimes described by the media and health professionals as a silent killer or a ticking time bomb which can lead to inappropriate fear and DIS-EASE. Using Mr. Hanks as a case study along with video clips from many of his great movies, I use the best available evidence to explain to him the real risks associated with this condition along with the benefits and harms of treatment. The results will VERY MUCH surprise you.
11. Doctor (123456789) – a parody of Tommy Tutone’s song Jenny (867-5309). This song tries to get everything you need to know about cardiovascular disease risk prevention into one song – no idea if it succeeds. Bottom line is you need to know your percent risk of heart attack/stroke with NO treatment VS your percent risk ON treatment and the chance of harm which includes side effects, cost and annoyance at measuring things all the time.
12. Make It Easy – a parody on the Eagle’s song Take It Easy – all about over diagnosis and minimally disruptive medicine.
13. Some Studies That I like to Quote – a parody of Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye. This song was designed to get clinicians thinking about the problem of strictly following cardiovascular guidelines/target shooting and NOT using evidence to help their patients make decisions.
14. Drug Too – a parody of Forget You by Cee Lo Green. There are many very useful medications that work such as nitroglycerin for chest pain, PPIs for heartburn, penicillin for a variety of infections, and acetaminophen for pain. However, there are also many medications that don’t work or produce unacceptable side effects (atenolol – lowers blood pressure but doesn’t reduce cardiovascular disease, Avandia reduces blood glucose but has no effect on cardiovascular disease or worsens it, Vioxx reduces pain but increases cardiovascular disease). It is in no way meant to be pro or anti-industry but rather that clinicians and patients need to be aware of the best available evidence. In addition, using very low doses and splitting tablets is a very important concept that will really help you use medications properly. The bottom line is make sure you are familiar with the evidence before you use or recommend medications to patients and hey, be careful out there.
15. The Surrogate Battle – is lower always better? – This video is to make people smile but to also get across the point that if you think that lowering blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose with medications always reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes etc then you really need to look at the evidence. Patients with very “big” blood pressures and glucose clearly get some benefit from medications but those with “slightly” elevated numbers likely get little if any important benefit.
