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Daily Rounds: Extreme Hazmat Parenting; Ending Annual Pap Smears; Hospital Medicine Growing Fast; Romney's Planned Parenthood Cuts

Is It Safe To Play Yet? (The New York Times) — "In lieu of a hazmat Onesie, the household chemical purge may be developing into a ritual of new parenthood, a counterpoint to the traditional baby shower. Talk to pediatricians, medical historians and environmental scientists, and they will tell you the social phenomenon hasn’t been studied much. Depending on whom you ask, it’s a media-induced mass hysteria, an eco-marketing trend, a public health campaign or a stealth environmental movement — possibly all of the above."

Doctors Revamp Guidelines For Pap Smears (NPR) — 'After reviewing the latest scientific evidence, the groups concluded that annual screening isn't necessary and, in fact, was harmful. Most women should wait until they turn 21, and then only get tested every three years if everything looks OK, according to the guidelines. "This is the first time that we're saying we recommend against annual screening," Saslow says.'

The Doctor Is Out: Young Talent Is Turning Away From Primary Care (The Atlantic) — '"It's no secret that there's a looming crisis in primary care. Estimates place the shortfall of doctors at 30,000 in the next couple of years. Yet medical schools are flush with applicants. Residency slots are filling at higher rates than ever before as new medical schools have been chartered and class sizes have expanded. So where are all the new doctors? In a word, the hospital. "Hospital medicine is the fastest growing specialty in American medical history," said Dr. Robert Wachter, chief of the division of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the man credited with coining the term "hospitalist" in 1996. According to statistics compiled by the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), the number of doctors practicing as hospitalists has increased 172 percent from 2003 to 2010. There are now more than 30,000 doctors nationwide that are classified as hospitalists: physicians who take care of hospitalized patients but no longer have office-based practices or do primary care.'

Democrats Ride Romney's Planned Parenthood Remarks (AP in The Boston Globe) — '"The Planned Parenthood controversy stems from a recent interview with a Missouri television station in which Romney addressed his plans to cut the federal deficit. "Is the program so critical that it is worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?" Romney asked. "And on that basis, of course you get rid of ObamaCare, that's the easy one. But there are others: Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that. The subsidy for Amtrak, I would eliminate that. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, both excellent programs, but we can't afford to borrow money to pay for these things."

This program aired on March 15, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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