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.

Parents Measuring Medicines Wrong – Many Dosing Errors

WAY TOO MANY errors for medicine measured with a spoon

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”

Both "parenting" and "childing" comes in several different styles

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

Elizabeth Blackwell and her dispensary

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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How To Talk To Teens and Other People

Celeste Headlee: 10 ways to have a better conversation

The term “conversation” does imply two way talking and sharing; but, not at the same time of course. The problem is that often conversations are nothing more than two people taking turns talking while giving different speeches. Stephen R. Covey observes that: “most don’t listen to understand. Most people listen with the intent to reply.” That won’t do if you really want to “talk” to a teen and NPRs Celeste Headlee tells you why… along with how to do it more effectively.

See the video…

Juvenile Diabetes and ProBiotics – Yogurt, Bacteria and Children

Boy with type 1 diabetes mixing insulin

The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study holds a deep interest for me—really everything about type 1 diabetes. And has, actually, from the very first clinical years of medical school.

Service with Dr. Marv Rallison in pediatric endocrine clinic gave me many early career “firsts” which continued into leading diabetic clinics of my own during my residency and obtaining grants for early studies of hemoglobin A1C (glycosylated hemoglobin)—which eventually revolutionized care of diabetic children and has become the current mainstay of management.
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Do Plants Have Brains?

Neuroscientist Greg Gage, the co-founder of “back-yard brains,” says his mission is to train the next generation of neuroscientists by taking graduate level neuroscience research equipment and making it available to kids in high schools and middle schools. In this talk he begins by asking “what has a brain” and goes from there with demonstrations that will challenge your preconceptions.

See the video…

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - On Death and Dying

Despite dealing with it—and often even causing it—the medical profession woefully neglected the slightest consideration of “dying” until 1969 when Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote “On Death and Dying” about her experiences with terminal patients.
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