Biloxi Personal Injury Law Blog

When people take prescription medications at night to help them sleep, they don't expect to feel the effects of the drug the next day. However, research and anecdotal data have increasingly shown that some sleep medications can make driving unsafe the following morning.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned manufacturers of medications containing zolpidem (particularly those considered "extended-release") to lower the recommended dose for women by as much as half but also to lower it for men. The agency says it has received about 700 reports of incidents where zolpidem impaired a person's ability to drive and in some cases resulted in accidents.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological condition where the body's immune system destroys tissue around the nerves. It impacts people very differently.

For some, the condition is progressive, eventually leaving them severely disabled. Others have what is called relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) where they have bouts of symptoms followed by partial or even complete recovery.

It's an unfortunate reality in this country that there are significant health disparities between white patients and those of other racial and ethnic groups -- particularly black patients. Some of these are caused by unequal treatment by physicians and other health care providers. At least part of the problem is that black patients are less likely to trust white doctors than black ones.

One doctor who studies ways to improve health care delivery and racial health disparities says that increasing what he calls "patient-provider racial and ethnic concordance" would help improve health outcomes for non-white patients. Studies have shown that when a patient is the same race as the doctor, the doctor spends more time with them, they wait less time for treatment and they share more in treatment decisions than if the doctor is of a different race. However, over half of the doctors in this country are white. By contrast, only about 6% are black.

We all know that doctors' personal biases can impact the level of care they provide their patients. They may not even be aware of these biases. However -- like all humans -- they have them. They can involve gender, race, weight and a host of other characteristics. For example, one study found that emergency department physicians were less likely to give black patients pain medication than white ones suffering approximately the same amount of pain.

However, studies are increasingly finding that doctors -- again, like all humans -- have cognitive biases. These can impact their treatment decisions. Cognitive biases are "mental shortcuts" people take that can result in erroneous decision-making. A key one that can impact medical treatment and have serious consequences for patients is "left-digit bias."