'Like Playing a Game of Whac-A-Mole': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by 's reporters

MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"It's like playing a game of Whac-A-Mole." -- Bill Reed, the chief event strategy officer for the American Society of Hematology, on taking down scam websites for medical organizations' annual meetings.

"Just one flush can hold a lot of information." -- Kristine Du, BSc, a lab technician at the University of Calgary, on wastewater-based virus surveillance.

"Nobody's buying a drill because they want a drill." -- Maura Grossman, JD, PhD, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, speaking about how artificial intelligence could be a useful tool in medicine.

"They're living in the bathroom. They don't want to live that way." -- Andrew Limper, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, speaking about a gut-friendlier dosage of nintedanib (Ofev).

"If you are thinking about traveling outside the United States or other Western countries for medical treatments: think twice." -- William Schaffner, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on cases of fungal meningitis linked to medical tourism in Mexico.

"It is one of the toughest things for us to do." -- Emily Zhao, MD, a resident at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, discussing the difficulty of treating intractable pain in the emergency department.

"Once you see it, you don't forget it." -- Eglė Janušonytė, MD, of Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland, on diagnosing shiitake dermatitis.

"We're perhaps taking a lot of unnecessary tests, wasting this blood, and then having to give it back." -- Christopher Seymour, MD, MSc, associate editor of JAMA, reevaluating blood transfusion practices in the intensive care unit.

"When they come through the door, the clinical team just descends upon them." -- Michael Filbin, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, on the difficulties of getting informed consent prior to clinical trial participation in emergency settings.

"Physicians may underestimate their risk of liability when supervising NPs and PAs." -- Summer Ghaith, JD, a medical student at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Arizona, on potential legal concerns for supervising physicians.