Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School #Hematology #MedEd Founder of @TheBloodProjec1
Boston, MA
Joined August 2021
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A sneak peek at what we're planning for The Blood Project's booth at #ASH26!
Stop by, pick up a curiosity card, test your knowledge, and explore the fascinating world of blood.
We look forward to seeing you there!
I've been quiet here for a few weeks, immersed in writing The River of Life, a book about blood.
Here's a figure from the manuscript. How can someone survive with a hemoglobin of 2.4 g/dL, while another person can be dying from massive blood loss with a normal hemoglobin?
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WHY TBP?
AI may soon be good enough that physicians no longer need to understand something deeply to get the right answer.
So how do we train master clinicians in a world where it becomes possible to practice medicine without mastering medicine?
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Understanding used to come from the work of reaching the answer. With AI, it will increasingly have to be cultivated on purpose.
Almost by accident, The Blood Project has been preparing for that world all along.
Curiosity. Mechanism. Critical reasoning. Judgment.
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AI doesn't make that mission less important.
It makes it more important.
The Blood Project: thebloodproject.com/
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THE SMOKE ALARM PRINCIPLE
Why does the body sometimes seem to overreact?
Because the cost of a false alarm may be far lower than the cost of missing a real threat.
A FIRST FOR ME TODAY: TRIPLE PICA
A patient with iron deficiency reported craving and consuming three different substances:
🧊 Ice
⬜ Chalk
🌱 Peat moss
I’m used to pica involving a craving for a single substance, especially ice. Rarely two.
William Aird retweeted
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IRON DEFICIENCY IS MORE THAN ANEMIA
Anemia gives us a fairly predictable set of symptoms: fatigue, dyspnea, exercise intolerance, palpitations.
Iron deficiency is much more colorful:
Fatigue
Dyspnea
Brain fog
Pica
Restless legs
Hair loss
And that’s not all...
1/2
IRON DEFICIENCY IS MORE THAN ANEMIA
Anemia gives us a fairly predictable set of symptoms: fatigue, dyspnea, exercise intolerance, palpitations.
Iron deficiency is much more colorful:
Fatigue
Dyspnea
Brain fog
Pica
Restless legs
Hair loss
And that’s not all...
William Aird retweeted
1/2
THE LOST ART OF THE CLINICAL NOTE
Copying and pasting pages of imaging reports into a clinical note doesn’t make the note more thorough. It makes it harder to read.
The art of note writing is deciding what matters, synthesizing it, and telling the reader why it matters.
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THE LOST ART OF THE CLINICAL NOTE
Copying and pasting pages of imaging reports into a clinical note doesn’t make the note more thorough. It makes it harder to read.
The art of note writing is deciding what matters, synthesizing it, and telling the reader why it matters.
POLL FROM CLINIC TODAY
Have you ever recommended lactoferrin for treatment of iron deficiency?
1%Yes, routinely
6%Yes, occasionally
27%No, but familiar with it
66%Wait... lacto-what?
160 votes • Final results1/5
WHAT IS THE SOCIAL HISTORY FOR?
I realized the other day that I’m so programmed to ask every patient whether they smoke and how much alcohol they drink that I feel uncomfortable leaving it out of the history.
4/5
But should we mechanically re-ask both questions in every subspecialty encounter simply because that’s what we were taught to include in a social history?