Benzos, Epidurals, and EHR, Oh My!

This is about benzodiazepines, epidurals and electronic health records. What a combination. I'm going to talk about benzodiazepines because it needs to be talked about, epidurals because it was asked to be talked about and electronic health records because no one talks about it. Benzodiazepines are wildly over prescribed. Many of our listeners are taking benzodiazepines, and they need to know about them. Remember Rule 4, know thy meds, know they categories, know the risk and benefits. Epidural management is a common procedure in the realm of pain management practice. This is one of the most common procedures performed throughout the world, and we're going to touch on explaining this procedure. This is part 1 of probably many parts. I'm going to touch a little bit on spinal anatomy, why you hurt, and move forward with a couple of comments on risk. Finally, I'm going to talk about electronic health records. What? Why is that important? Well it's important because it is a conversation. The medical record is a conversation among medical practitioners, and we are not the best communicators. Medicine is one of the last great enterprises to not understand the digital world. We're going into this slowly, as we should, and the electronic health record is a part of all of our lives. We are evolving together. I'm going to talk about the electronic health record more than once, from an individual who has built one, developed one, lectured and written about the electronic health record, and what it means to you. It is your information. It is a communication amongst professionals that can lead to a positive or negative outcome depending on how the information is conveyed, presented and communicated. Let's talk about this.