Controlled Medication Agreements

Controlled Medication Agreements for controlled substances are an important part of pain management. For the patient, they offer informed consent on the dangers of longterm opioid therapy and clearly explain the expectations and monitoring requirements of the practice. For the physician, they can offer significant legal protection. This document is offered for educational purposes only and is provided "as is". It is not intended to provide any legal advice or supplement legal counsel. Before initiating any agreement within your practice, I would run your your agreement by a pain medicine specialist and a lawyer. Click here to download a PDF version of this document. Best wishes!

Diagnosing Dizziness

Since dizziness can be cause by anything from BPPV to brain tumor, diagnosing the cause of dizziness can be a hugh challenge! This is an algorithm (or map) that I made to help simply the process. Hope it helps! A much higher quality PDF version of this algorithm is available by clicking here.

Diagnosing Diabetes

The ADA guidelines for diagnosing diabetes are not always straight forward—there is a barrage of random numbers to memorize. See if this handout which has an easy pneumonic that I made up for the residents helps to ease some of the pain. Also I have included a handout explaining how to use the Homeostatis Model Assessment (HOMA) to determine whether a diabetic patient has an insulin production problem, a peripheral resistance problem, or both. (NOTE: Don't click on the image below since it will only give you a low quality image; click instead on the "this handout" link above).

Finally, I want to give Dr. George Guthrie profuse thanks for his help in putting together these handouts, and for lending his expertise at the 2012 AAFP Scientific Assembly. Thanks George, you are a blessing. He also added feet and toes and eyes to the pneumonic (to help us remember to do our diabetic feet exams and eye exams). Cool!

COOL MEDICAL APPS

It's almost impossible to practice medicine now without using technology. CLICK HERE for a small PDF file with some cool links for some iPhone and Android Apps that you might find useful. This file is a compendium to a lecture that I gave on Technology and Medicine at Florida Hospital. Enjoy! (DISCLOSURE: I have no financial relationship with and of these companies, and I have personally bought every single one of these iOS apps myself—unless, of course, they offer it FREE!)