Violence and Children’s Health; Unmasking Hospital Abuse; When a Patient Dies

• Does exposure to violence affect a child’s health? Dylan B. Jackson, Chad Posick, and Michael G. Vaughn, examine the link between a child’s exposure to violence in the community and health problems ~ New Evidence Of The Nexus Between Neighborhood Violence, Perceptions Of Danger, And Child Health (Health Affairs)
• Many healthcare providers face physical and verbal abuse from patients and their families, Marlene Harris-Taylor writes ~ Escalating Workplace Violence Rocks Hospitals (Kaiser Health News)
• A patient’s death can have a significant impact on physicians. Mary C. Vance discusses strategies to promote resilience among caregivers ~ Recognizing Trauma In The Healer (Health Affairs)
• Can we justify the level of healthcare spending in the U.S., given that health outcomes are often worse than those in other countries? Austin Frakt asks ~ Is Our Health Care Spending Worth It? (The New York Times)
• Colleen M. Farrell, MD, reflects on overcoming burnout during medical school, explaining that “without the ability to relax and expand, I fell into a state of decompensated heart failure — gasping for breath, drowning from the inside” ~ Systole and Diastole, Strength and Openness (JAMA)
• Few doctors outside the military setting are well-trained to care for people with PTSD, leaving many without adequate support, Caroline Covington writes ~ For Civilians, Finding A Therapist Skilled In PTSD Treatments Is A Tough Task (Kaiser Health News)
• Wafaa M. El-Sadr, MD, MPH, and colleagues explore why “ending AIDS as a public health threat in the United States is achievable,” but “not be a simple endeavor” ~ AIDS in America — Back in the Headlines at Long Last (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.