Pelzman’s Picks: Breaking Bad News to Seriously Sick Kids

• When a child or parent is facing a serious illness, how should doctors break the news to the child? Perri Klass, MD, explores the role physicians should play in this difficult scenario ~ Talking to Children About Terminal Illness (New York Times)
• Can payers, physicians, and hospitals develop a trusting relationship? Lewis G. Sandy, MD, Hoangmai H. Pham, MD, MPH, and Sharon Levine, MD, discuss the challenges inherent to these relationships and strategies to encourage trust ~ Building Trust Between Physicians, Hospitals, and Payers (JAMA)
• A one-size-fits-all approach to combatting loneliness in older adults “won’t work,” experts say. Judith Graham reviews our current understanding of loneliness in this population and how to assuage it ~ Understanding Loneliness In Older Adults — And Tailoring A Solution (Kaiser Health News)
• Kevin A. Schulman, MD, and Barak D. Richman, JD, PhD, explore why business innovation in healthcare has failed ~ Toward an Effective Innovation Agenda (New England Journal of Medicine)
• “I am racist, shaped by the sometimes subtle tendrils of white supremacy deeply embedded in our culture,” writes Deborah Cohan, MD, MPH, who discusses racial bias among white physicians ~ Racist Like Me — A Call to Self-Reflection and Action for White Physicians (New England Journal of Medicine)
• Can policies reduce firearm-related deaths? April M. Zeoli, PhD, MPH, and Daniel W. Webster, ScD, MPH, outline recent literature that shows such policies are effective ~ Firearm Policies That Work (JAMA)
• Marcus D. Ruopp, MD, reflects on his approach to rounds and efforts to encourage a “freedom of self-exploration” ~ Bedside Rounds (Annals of Internal Medicine)
• Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, describes the “bystander effect” and how it plays out in medicine ~ The Not-My-Problem Problem (New England Journal of Medicine)

Fred N. Pelzman, MD, of Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates and weekly blogger for MedPage Today, follows what’s going on in the world of primary care medicine. Pelzman’s Picks is a compilation of links to blogs, articles, tweets, journal studies, opinion pieces, and news briefs related to primary care that caught his eye.