Generic Plan B

Monday, pharmaceutical companies can start marketing a generic version of Plan B. I hope this will increase access to emergency contraception (EC), but I am skeptical. Part of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Plan B works (or doesn’t work, for that matter). Part of the problem is the regulatory issues which won’t change just because there’s a generic version.

I’d like to think that clinicians are better informed about EC today, but I’m not sure that’s true everywhere. However, I stumbled across a pretty cool tool that can assist you in putting together a high quality presentation on this topic, should you care to provide some training to staff or colleagues.

Trafficking in Persons

I don’t know how many of you read the Sunday NY Times, but this past weekend the Magazine ran a special series: Saving the World’s Women. There were a few articles that were particularly interesting, including The Women’s Crusade and an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Not surprisingly, trafficking and gender-based violence were discussed repeatedly.

Recognizing Child Abuse

Medscape has a new slideshow available: Recognizing Child Abuse. It’s free to access (registration is required, also free) and would make another fantastic continuing education presentation for your team. The slideshow includes multiple annotated injury photos, films and recent stats, but it’s still brief enough to review during a staff meeting or inservice (there are 25 slides total). Child sexual abuse is also addressed, albeit briefly.

It’s certainly not the most comprehensive presentation on the topic, but it’s a nice overview. I’ll look forward to hearing your opinions…

Bruising in the Elderly

From the Center of Excellence in Elder Abuse and Neglect:  Bruising in Older Adults–Accidental and Inflicted (LINK HAS BEEN FIXED). This podcast reviews two studies about bruising in the elderly and discusses the all important issue of using color to accurately age bruises.

Part of the work of the Center of Excellence is the Elder Abuse Forensic Center. To read about their finding, check out their report in The Gerontologist here. They also have published a PDF with links to images of physical markers of elder abuse, which you can access here.

Cervical Photos

Last week, in a comment about the STI Clinical Guide,  I was asked about cervical images unrelated to STIs. Having searched a bit, I found a few sites that provide images to review. One of the best was over at the Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research.

STI Clinical Guide

I’ve been wanting to start publishing guides on this site for some time, and just haven’t gotten around to doing it until now. Because there’s so much content on this site (and still more out there in the interwebs) I figured it might be useful periodically to provide a post that gives you some ideas of how to use the content more broadly than just individual professional enrichment.

An FHO Extra: DermAtlas

Have you visited DermAtlas? Fully searchable with photos galore…and a differential tool, to boot. Man, I love derm. Add that to your list of weird bits you know about me.