pediatric housecalls Robert R. Jarrett M.D. M.B.A. FAAP

Hello, and welcome to Pediatric House Calls. I am…
A Physician board certified in Pediatric medicine with Clinical experience including caring for infants, children and teens – well these days mostly children and teens up to twenty-one;
An Administrator experienced in top medical management for several national health insurance companies;
An Author of health care manuals, newspaper columns and even children's stories;
A Business Medical Consultant for drug companies, insurance companies and physician practices;
A Veteran of the US Navy in the Vietnam era;
And…
I make House-Calls.

“Flu,” “The” Flu or Influenza – Then and Now

Look, there’s a lot screwy about “THE FLU” and enough blame to share about all the confusion. AND, only part of it is about the complete lack of understanding surrounding what to call it.

Morethanonce I’ve written posts trying to clarify the name, diagnosis, treatment an how to avoid confusion; but, the issues just seem to feed on themselves and prevent any attempt at understanding.
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E. Donnall Thomas, Joseph Murray-Most Influential Doctors

Old man death has not had such an easy time since these next two “most influential doctors of all time” came on the scene.

Dr. E. Donnall Thomas and Dr. Joseph E Murry, both received the 1990 Nobel prize for their independent lifetime of work against cancer and the life-saving techniques they developed and pioneered.
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The Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain

Sarah-Jayne BLAKEMOREthe Adolescent Brain

It would be a rare parent indeed who didn’t, at least once, wish they could peer into their son’s or daughter’s adolescent brain—if only just to see “what on earth made them do THAT!”

Well, a noted neuroscientist, and mother of a teenager, has done it for you! Look into the adolescent brain. Here’s what she found in there.

See the video…

New Immunization Schedule: 2018


Like we do every year, and sometimes twice, we post the newly updated Immunization Schedule recommendations from the CDC and the AAP. You can get them direct from the CDC of course, but I post them here because I want to do my part in spreading the word And, you’re already here right? So why waste the effort of looking it up yourself?>

This year the link to the CDC page has BLOATED into a bunch of self-promoting side stuff; so, I’ve had to clip their page in order to display it but not foul up my whole page. However, I do give you all the links to their full pages—should you want to check out the specifics. In fact here’s a good link right HERE and HERE but there are others I’ll give you too.
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Parents Measuring Medicines Wrong – Many Dosing Errors

Would it surprise you to know that: if YOU were one of the medicine police and one morning selected 100 mothers or fathers to just drop in and double-check the liquid medicine they had measured and were about to give their kid – most of them would be wrong?!

We would have to have been living under a rock in a desert somewhere NOT to have noticed the inordinate lengths pharmacies and drug companies have gone to in the past 10 years to improve accuracy of parents measuring medicines. But, still to this day (2018), parents are (and often) making BIG errors when measuring medicines.
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Discipline, Parents, Kids and “Natural Consequences”

I got a kick discovering an “atlas” of parenting and discipline types (according to Laura Hamilton at UC-Merced CA) who tallied three categories: Bystander parents with limited kid contact; Paramedics swooping in for major problems; and, Helicopters always hovering all the time.

I say a kick because although entertainingly descriptive (and perhaps embarrassingly accurate to a degree) it just seems to leave a WHOLE LOT out of the equation—and ignore half of it entirely: the kid!
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Elizabeth Blackwell

We’ve been following a list of the 50 most influential physicians in history compiled by a medical magazine and have reached number 32 with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

A lot has been written about her, I suppose mostly due to the fact that she was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. No small feat; but, it’s difficult to describe how to call it: serendipity? Chance? Accidental? Stubbornness? Tenacity? Luck?
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