Today’s doctor visits look and feel a lot different than they did even just a couple decades ago. 

Rushed physicians and medical trainees are spending less time with patients, leading to diagnostic errors, poor patient outcomes and increased costs in health care. The influx of AI and other new technology has led to a decline in modern medical trainees’ fundamental bedside skills and a weakening of the doctor-patient relationship. There is a lack of empathy and an increase in physician stress and burnout. The list goes on.

To help reverse these trends, a new report from Northwestern University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham provides six practical strategies to reinvigorate a waning culture of bedside medicine in this new health care environment. The suggestions give clinicians and medical educators guidance on how to better teach and practice important bedside clinical skills, such as the physical exam.

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from lakes and reservoirs risk doubling by the end of the century due to climate change according to a new study from Linköping University, Sweden, and NASA Ames Research Center in the US. This in turn could raise Earth’s temperature more than suggested by the UN climate panel IPCC’s current worst-case scenario.