Sunday, August 26, 2018

Surviving a fall | Open medical records | Overdose antidote intel

Why you might want to take a look at the notes your doctor makes about you
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How To Survive A 10,000-Foot Fall

A handful of lucky people have survived falls from extraordinary heights. We wondered, what would it take to survive? Experimental evidence on the subject is thin, because, as physics professor Rhett Allain points out, it's unethical to throw people out of airplanes for science.

Still, Allain and others have a few ideas about the factors that might determine whether you survive a tumble from thousands of feet in the air. There are a few things you need to do.
 
overdose antidote
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If You Love Someone With Addiction, Here’s Information That Could Save Their Lives

If you're looking out for someone at risk of having an opioid overdose, you may want to have naloxone, the opioid antidote, on hand. But how do you get it, since it’s a prescription drug?

Laws have passed in nearly every state allowing pharmacists to dispense the drug without an individual prescription. And it's easy to use -- it’s available as a nasal spray called Narcan or as an EpiPen-like automatic injection. (Some states require training in before you can pick up naloxone.)

Many Americans don’t know these life-saving facts, as Shots learned in this NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll. Find more info and full results here.
 
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You Might Want To Check Out What Your Doctor Writes About You 

A growing movement is pushing to give patients easier access to their medical records online. It started as an academic experiment but has now become the norm at an increasing number of health care systems across the country.

Sometimes when patients study their own notes, they catch errors as serious as the wrong diagnosis. "The clinician has only two eyes on a couple thousand charts, and a patient has their two eyes only on theirs," says Dr. Catherine DesRosches, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

Read on to learn more about the open notes movement.

We hope you enjoyed our stories this week! Read more of NPR's health coverage here.

Your Shots editor,

Carmel Wroth
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