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It really irritates me when people who work in the oncology clinic smoke. I know, I know, just because they smoke doesn't mean they can't do a good job in the care of a cancer patient. I agree with you. I also know that they smell like an ashtray, and that smell can be just too much for a cancer patient trying to quit smoking. When I used to work in the lung cancer clinic, in fact, the patients told me just that. Also, how totally ridiculous is it to have to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke from hospital employees smoking as you try to get to your car after chemotherapy? So, I feel no need to enable the smokers. You need to trek off hospital grounds to smoke? So be it. And yes, if they can swing it, a hospital ought to pay for smoking cessation programs for its employees. In a related question, the Wall Street Journal asks "How far should companies go to help workers be healthy?"

In a horrifying accident related to an error in the default settings, a CT scanner at Cedars-Sinai gave up to 200 patients 8 times the usual radiation given during scans. How did they figure this out? A patient reported losing his hair after a head CT! Recently, I keep thinking we have been underestimating the radiation given during all the scans we order.

And a little love to Madison, Wisconsin's very own electronic health records company Epic! I'm not here to advertise for them, I'm just happy to see the Midwest getting a little press. (Also related, this weekend I had to explain to a physician that Wisconsin was north of Illinois, so I can in fact drive to Chicago. And this isn't the first time. Living in the middle of America I have gotten used to people viewing everything between the east and west coast as a place you go only for a layover in airports and nothing else.)