Ep 229: The Practice of Medicine

In these difficult times, no one's had a harder time than our medical professionals. They see death every day, and they fight it. What is it like to be a doctor in India? Lancelot Pinto joins Amit Varma in episode 229 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about the practice of medicine in general, and the battle against Covid-19 in particular. Also discussed: the incentives of doctors, the importance of sleep, how to quit smoking, and the Epidemic of Sighing.

Also check out:
1. Past episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on Covid-19, featuring (in reverse chronological order) Ashwin Mahesh, Gautam Menon, Ajay Shah, Anirban Mahapatra, Ruben Mascarenhas, Chinmay Tumbe, Rukmini S, Vaidehi Tandel, Vivek Kaul, Anup Malani and Shruti Rajagopalan. 
2. Robin Cook on Amazon.
3. The Case Against Sugar — Gary Taubes.
4. The Big Fat Surprise: why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet — Nina Teicholz.
5. UpToDate.
6. Understanding Indian Healthcare -- Episode 225 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan).
7. Money for nothing: The dire straits of medical practice in Delhi, India (2007) — Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer. 
8. Dunning-Kruger Effect (Wikipedia).
9. Poker at Lake Wobegon -- Amit Varma.
10. Bad Science -- Ben Goldacre.
11. Homeopathic Faith (2010) -- Amit Varma.
12. Beware of Quacks. Alternative Medicine is Injurious to Health -- Amit Varma.
13. Is it risky to push alternative medicine in Covid pandemic? -- Lancelot Pinto.
14. The Kavita Krishnan Files -- Episode 228 of The Seen and the Unseen.
15. Amit Varma's episode of The Book Club on Mary Wollstonecraft.
16. Being Mortal -- Atul Gawande.
17. How Doctors Die -- Ken Murray.
18. Do not go gentle into that good night -- Dylan Thomas.
19. 24 & Ready to Die -- Economist documentary on euthanasia.
20. Complications -- Atul Gawande.
21. My Own Country -- Abraham Verghese.
22. Deep Medicine -- Eric Topol.
23. Other books by Gawande and Verghese.  
24. The Looming Tower -- Lawrence Wright.
25. Do No Harm -- Henry Marsh.
26. The Rules of Contagion -- Adam Kucharski.
27. What Cricket Can Learn From Poker -- Amit Varma's essay on probabilistic thinking.
28. The Cochrane Collaboration.

Links on Sleep
29. Lancelot Pinto's talk on sleep.
30. Lancelot Pinto on Sleep Apnea
31. What's keeping you up at night? -- Lancelot Pinto.
32. Are you terrified of falling asleep? -- Lancelot Pinto.
33. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams -- Matthew Walker.
34. Tetris Dreams.

Links on Tobacco Cessation
35. Lancelot Pinto's Twitter thread on stopping smoking.
36. Global Adult Tobacco Survey.
37. The Odds of Ceasing to Smoke Tobacco -- A visual aid 

Links on Tuberculosis
38. Tuberculosis Management by Private Practitioners in Mumbai, India: Has Anything Changed in Two Decades? -- Zarir Udwadia, Lancelot Pinto & Mukund Uplekar.
39. Private patient perceptions about a public programme -- Lancelot Pinto & Zareer Udwadia.
40. Mismanagement of tuberculosis in India: Causes, consequences, and the way forward -- Anurag Bhargava, Lancelot Pinto & Madhukar Pai.
41. A study on telemedicine during Covid-19 co-written by Lancelot Pinto.

Links on Covid-19
42. An interview of Lancelot Pinto & Rajani Bhat by Govindraj Ethiraj.
43. India Covid SOS
44. Lancelot Pinto and others interviewed by Barkha Dutt on changed Covid protocols..
45. Lancelot Pinto and others interviewed by Barkha Dutt on the use of steroids for Covid treatment.
46. Lancelot Pinto & Sumit Ray interviewed by Govindraj Ethirah on the need to update guidelines.
47. A CT scan for COVID merits a word of caution -- Lancelot Pinto.
48. Lancelot Pinto interviewed by Smitha Nair.
49. Comprehensive Guidelines for Management of COVID-19 patients.

This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader, FutureStack and The Social Capital Compound. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off.

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And check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.