Full court press

Short White Coat is a blog about learning to be a doctor. Posts appear here as part of White Coat Notes. Ishani Ganguli is a third-year Harvard medical student. E-mail her at shortwhitecoat@gmail.com.

I saw real-time proof yesterday of the impact of medical journalism.

I sat down in the late morning with a 31-year-old smoker with asthma whom our team had treated for acute exacerbation of her disease. My mission, as we prepared to send her home, was to get her to think about quitting smoking.

We chatted about what has kept her from successfully quitting in the past and about the major benefits of doing so. (Among asthma sufferers, smoking is known to worsen symptoms and quality of life, and to send patients to the hospital with acute attacks at up to three times the rate of nonsmokers. There’s even evidence that it renders standard therapies for asthma less effective.)

And then, on a whim, I gave her a copy of a Globe article I'd written on smoking cessation and asked her to think about her options. When I returned to her room a few minutes later, she had all but highlighted Wellbutrin on the accompanying chart and was rearing to try the drug (She had heard about it in the news). The article was a handy way to present her with the facts, and in reality, it's the form in which many patients get their health information.

Efficacy of Wellbutrin aside, I was just glad to see that the method had her motivated to quit. Let’s hope it sticks.