By Rick Rader, MD

Walk into the lobby of any mega medical center of excellence.
 
Looking at the hospital department directory you will find the following signs accompanied by multi-directional arrows:  Surgery…Pathology…Imaging...Neurology…Research…Cardiology
.Interventional Diagnostics…all hard core science.  Departments that incorporate the best, solid, evidence based practices.  Departments that depend on insights, outcomes and results from the gold standard of medicine, the scientific method.  No room for a coin toss, the throw of the dice, or shuffling and picking a card. In shor,t no room for chance, no room for luck. Or is there?

Mar 30, 2012 - 9:01:23 AM Read more

A “Special” Suggestion
By Stuart Thorn

OK, please, please, go easy on me here.  I am about to tell all you emperors that you are butt naked.  I will do so with good intention, just as I expect you will resist my advice with equally well-considered intent.  But, please hear me out – because as an innocent bystander, maybe, just maybe, I have a different perspective that’s worth contemplating.

Mar 9, 2012 - 10:07:54 PM Read more

By Rick Rader, MD

I like to collect things.

Stuff is probably a better description of things I collect. On my desk I have a piston from an old race car, an Albert Einstein bobble head, a “Slinky,” a Zuni carving and an empty box of malaria pills. There’s no rhyme or reason for the ensemble. I accumulate stuff. Like most museums, my stuff gets rotated as I stumble on new stuff. The thing about my stuff is that it seems to send out messages to my colleagues. 

Dec 6, 2011 - 6:18:46 PM Read more

by Rick Rader, MD

I woke up this morning with the sniffles.

Okay I agree, for the editor-in-chief of the nation’s most respected publication addressing the spectrum of complex disabilities to get on a soapbox and discuss “the sniffles” is pretty lame. Beyond lame, I should be embarrassed, banished and whipped within a quarter inch of my life.  The sniffles don’t even rate a footnote in the annals of the disorders, conditions, syndromes and disabilities that are common to readers of Exceptional Parent.

Nov 10, 2011 - 1:05:17 PM Read more

BY Rick Rader, MD

While I do a lot of writing in airplanes, I’m glad I’m doing this one on terra firma.

Technology has had a revolutionary impact on how we do our jobs. We are more productive, more efficient and more accurate. But not in all areas, safer.

The one area where you would assume technology has provided us with an increased margin of safety is flying. And you would be right…and wrong. Thanks, in part to technology, fatal airline accidents have decreased dramatically over the past decade. But that same technology has created a new fear factor; pilots are forgetting how to handle emergencies.

Oct 13, 2011 - 5:20:30 PM Read more

Rick Rader, MD, Editor-in-Chief

As a journalist and “news junkie,” I have long been amused by some of the outlandish “headlines” that have appeared in the press. These headlines, requiring a double take, come in several flavors.

The first form comes from the supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer; these are “gems.” “Marilyn Monroe abducted by aliens, reappears as aardvark!” or “Exclusive: JFK Planned Own Assassination.” The public buys it, in droves. There is seemingly nothing too outrageous, too bizarre, or too inconceivable for the tabloid.

Sep 6, 2011 - 6:52:06 PM Read more