1 . SOME SECRETS HOSPITALS WON'T TELL YOU
1.
It's more cost-effective — and usually OK — to bring your own medicines from home, but the hospital pharmacy will have to check them to confirm they are what the bottle says. Just ask your doctor to write the order.
MICHELE CURTIS, MD,
a doctor in Houston, Texas
2.
In many hospitals, VIP patients get special treatment. They may stay in special areas or have a VIP notation on their chart, which means that whenever their bell goes off, we are expected to make that patient's request a priority, whether it's "I need some water" or "Can you get me some stamps?" Hospitals don't add more nurses；they just take away from the care everybody else gets.
DEBORAH BURGER, RN
3.
Eight out of ten hospital bills we see contain an error, so check your bill carefully. You may identify a drug you didn't take. Or you know that discontinued treatment on Tuesday, but you were charged for Wednesday. The number on the bill is only a starting point. Try to negotiate for 35 to 50 percent off the charges.
PAT PALMER, CEO of Medical Billing
Advocates of America
4.
Hospitals used not to care about you once you were discharged (出院). But under new rules, they face financial punishment if you are re-admitted within 30 days. So now you may get a call from a nurse case manager a day or two after you're discharged asking if you have any questions, checking if you got your prescription filled, and making sure you have transportation to your follow-up appointment.
JOHN W. MITCHELL,
former CEO of three hospitals
5.
You can stay overnight in the hospital but never officially be "admitted." Instead, the hospital can say you are there "under observation." That can be tricky for seniors because if they're then sent to nursing home for rehab (复原). Medicare won't pay for it unless they were actually admitted. Always ask whether you're admitted.
DEBORAH BURGER, RN
6.
One time, I ran into a patient I had performed an appendectomy (阑尾切除) on. He thanked me for saving his life; then he told me it almost ruined him because he couldn't pay the bill. Four hours in the hospital, and they charged him $12,000, and that didn't even include my fee. I showed his bill to some other doctors. We took out an ad in the newspaper demanding change.
HANS RECHSTEINER, MD.
a general surgeon in northern Wisconsin
1. Which of the secrets above offer advice on lowering treatment fees?| A．1 and 3 | B．5 and 3 | C．2 and 4 | D．1 and 6 |
| A．Low cost of Hans Rechsteiner's operation. | B．The human side of medical staff. |
| C．The difficulty of putting ads in newspaper. | D．The ease with which an appendectomy is performed. |
| A．Elder patients should be alert to whether they are admitted. |
| B．Some hospitals were indifferent to patients leaving hospitals. |
| C．Nursing staff may fail to attend to some patients promptly. |
| D．Hospitals will be fined if an error on the bill is found. |
2 . The robotic doctor will see you now
In the age of social distancing, using robots for some health care interactions is a promising way to reduce in-person contact between health care workers and sick patients. However, a key question that needs to be answered is how patients will react to a robot entering the exam room.
“We're actively working on robots that can help provide care to maximize the safety of both the patient and the health care workforce.
After the Covid-19 pandemic began early last year, Traverso and his colleagues turned their attention toward new strategies to minimize interactions between potentially sick patients and health care workers. To that end, they worked with Boston Dynamics to create a mobile robot that could interact with patients as they waited in the emergency department. The robots were equipped with sensors that allow them to measure vital signs, including skin temperature, breathing rate, and pulse rate.
The study suggests that it could be worthwhile to try to develop robots that can perform procedures that currently require a lot of human effort, such as turning a patient over in bed, the researchers say. Turning Covid-19 patients onto their stomachs has been shown to improve their blood oxygen levels and make breathing easier.
| A．The robots also carried an iPad that allowed for remote video communication with a health care provider. |
| B．Up to 30 percent of the participants reported that they were concerned with the robotic system. |
| C．Researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently set out to answer that question. |
| D．Currently the process requires several people to perform. |
| E．However, the question still remained whether patients would be receptive to this type of interaction. |
| F．The results of this study give us some confidence that people are ready and willing to engage with us on those fronts. |
3 . Fear is a natural and valuable emotion. It has great survival value for human beings,
Anxiety is prolonged fear that persists in the
Broadly speaking, two CBT approaches for treating anxiety have
If you suffer from anxiety, you can apply the latest and most effective procedure for exposure, called restrictive learning. It was
The most effective coping
| A．persuading | B．remembering | C．expecting | D．preparing |
| A．jealous | B．painful | C．innocent | D．conscious |
| A．abstract | B．existence | C．absence | D．continuation |
| A．potential | B．essential | C．available | D．sustainable |
| A．instructs | B．challenges | C．stimulates | D．dominates |
| A．effective | B．objective | C．invisible | D．significant |
| A．pressure | B．ignorance | C．anxiety | D．depression |
| A．described | B．emerged | C．protected | D．supervised |
| A．overlook | B．simplify | C．remark | D．handle |
| A．purposefully | B．vigorously | C．sincerely | D．passionately |
| A．breaks through | B．turns down | C．results in | D．works out |
| A．composed | B．developed | C．predicted | D．symbolized |
| A．commitment | B．evidence | C．assessment | D．process |
| A．strategies | B．behaviors | C．responses | D．examples |
| A．naturally | B．probably | C．highly | D．initially |
The protection provided by COVID-19 vaccines declines after four to six months, a large United Kingdom study has found. Researchers from health science company ZOE, a spin-out from King’s College London, recently have found that a full course of the Pfizer vaccine was 88 percent effective at preventing infection after one month, and this protection fell to 74 percent after five to six months.
Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology who led the research, said that the data is broadly consistent with various other studies on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy over time, including a recent survey from Oxford University that found protection from the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs against the Delta variant weakened within three months.
However, Simon Clarke, an associate professor in microbiology at Reading University, who was not involved in the research, said the claim that protection may dip below 50 percent this year “is not based on any strong analysis of data” and seems “more like a finger in the air prediction”.
“Immunity is a complex process and we cannot assume people’s immunity will fade at a uniform rate over time,” Clarke said.
Peter English, a former chairman of the British Medical Association’s Public Health Medicine Committee, who was not involved in the research, said that the data is limited as it did not provide information about vaccine efficacy at preventing severe disease.
“There is a world of difference between efficacy against, on the one hand, any infection and on the other hand, illness severe enough to require hospitalization, critical care, or to cause death,” English said.
Spector said that, in light of the new research, “we urgently need to make plans for vaccine boosters”, or third shots aimed at combating fading immunity. He told the BBC that these shots should be reserved for certain groups, and that a widespread booster campaign would be a “huge waste” and “ethically dubious”.
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5 . If you followed the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, you may have noticed that several athletes, including US swimmer Michael Phelps, had circular bruises on their bodies. These bruises were the results of “cupping therapy”, a traditional Chinese medical practice that has been around for more than 2,000 years.
Cupping therapy involves attaching circular cups to the skin using suction(吸力). The suction is created either by heating the cup inside or by using a handheld pump. This suction pulls the skin upward into the cup. Sometimes it can leave dark red bruises, other times there is no mark at all.
Many athletes say that they have benefited from the therapy. Phelps used the therapy in the fall of 2014 and has used it about twice a week since, reported ABC News. Another US swimmer, Dana Vollmer, also believes that “it really helps with blood flow, and helps pull swelling out of different areas.”
However, some have said that the supposed health effects result from people feeling that the treatment works, rather than any physical effects of the treatment.
To figure out whether cupping therapy has any physical effects, last year researchers from Germany carried out a test in which a sham(假装的) treatment was provided.
In the study, the same type of cups was used in the real treatment and the sham treatment. But in the sham treatment, the cups had a hole at the top so that they couldn’t create the proper suction.
The tested patients, who suffered from a disorder(疾病) that causes a lot of pain, were told that they would receive either a traditional cupping or “soft cupping”. But they were not informed that the so-called “soft cupping” was a sham treatment.
It turned out that most patients correctly guessed which kind of cupping they had received. In both groups, patients also experienced about the same reductions in pain. The results suggest the effects of cupping therapy might come fro factors that are not necessarily part of the treatment itself, the researchers told the Live Science website.
The question of whether cupping therapy works still needs to be answered. But because the treatment is relatively safe and it could be helpful for some people, “the therapy can be used as a part of a comprehensive treatment program involving other exercises, nutritional choices and lifestyle interventions(干预)”, Dr Brent Bauer, director of the US’ Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program, told Live Science.
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE about cupping therapy?| A．It leaves bruises every time. | B．Heating is crucial to cupping therapy. |
| C．The key to cupping therapy is suction. | D．It has been widely used in Western countries. |
| A．prove the health effects of cupping therapy |
| B．see whether cupping therapy has a physical effect |
| C．compare traditional cupping and the soft cupping |
| D．compare cupping therapy’s effects on different groups of people |
| A．Different types of cups were used for different cupping therapies. |
| B．Patients knew which kind of cupping treatment they would receive before the treatment. |
| C．The real treatment and the sham treatment were almost equally effective for patients. |
| D．The results show the effects of cupping therapy result from people’s belief in the treatment |
| A．easy and convenient to carry out |
| B．newly invented and untraditional |
| C．requiring a long period of time to take effect |
| D．including everything that is important and necessary |
6 . Many scientists now believe that death is not biologically inevitable and could be avoided if there were cures for all life-threatening diseases.However,perhaps the real question is not whether eternal(永 恒的)life will one day be possible,but whether the
This raises the question: what
And what about the frustrations of our memories which often
There would be other problems too.Unless we began to explore space,the Earth would soon be burdened with too many people and some sort of limit on the number of children we can have might be
Given all this, it seems that longer life might come at a
| A．life | B．pursuit | C．approach | D．evidence |
| A．death | B．wealth | C．suffering | D．happiness |
| A．diligent | B．unhealthy | C．inactive | D．relaxed |
| A．In contrast | B．In addition | C．After all | D．As a result |
| A．motivation | B．courage | C．property | D．publicity |
| A．However | B．Strangely | C．Otherwise | D．Indeed |
| A．similar | B．strong | C．opposing | D．changing |
| A．in contrast to | B．in harmony with | C．in line with | D．in response to |
| A．imposed on | B．taken from | C．exposed to | D．applied to |
| A．limit | B．company | C．fail | D．amaze |
| A．publicize | B．acknowledge | C．foresee | D．command |
| A．catching hold of | B．keeping track of | C．losing sight of | D．coming up with |
| A．uncertain | B．extinct | C．invisible | D．necessary |
| A．time | B．distance | C．price | D．target |
| A．desired | B．selected | C．treated | D．born |
American College of Physicians 'stepped out of its lane" by placing gun control in medical education. Stanley Gold-farb, formerly the associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, argued that teaching social justice issues and population health comes "at the expense of strict training in medical science" at a time when sub-specialists are in short supply. But many physicians, ourselves included, think social issues should be at the heart of medical education.
Formal medical school typically takes four years, followed by several years of residency（住院医生实习期）and often a fellowship（研究员职位）, and during that short time students have a wide range of competing requirements. They must learn complex biological and chemical pathways that explain diseases and health. They must be educated on how to read the the scientific literature and apply it to their patients. They must master many therapies and know how to adapt them to patients' varied diseases states. On top of all this, they must learn to communicate effectively and compassionately with patients and colleagues.
Being a good doctor also demands that we understand the reasons behind poor health. Our mission is not simply to diagnose, manage and treat. Physicians should act to prevent the root causes of illness and improve well-being. Physicians are trained to tackle problems at their root. System and structural-level social issues are also drivers of poor health, and it is our duty to address them. Medical training must evolve to produce doctors who are able to not only treat the individual but also understand the larger influencers of health -- of which gun violence is most emphatically one. As medical professors, we would fail our students -- and our patients - if we expected any less.
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8 . For years, the U. S. has experienced a shortage of registered nurses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that while the number of nurses will increase by 19 percent by 2022, demand will grow faster than supply, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs by then.
So what's the solution? Robots.
Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend. Toyohashi University of Technology has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can make hospital rounds, deliver medications and other items, and retrieve records. It follows a specific individual, such as a doctor or nurse, who can use it to record and access patient data. This type of robot will likely be one of the first to be implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact.
Robots capable of social engagement help with loneliness as well as cognitive functioning, but the robot itself doesn't have to engage directly—it can serve as an intermediary for human communication. Telepresence robots such as MantaroBot, Vgo, and Giraff can be controlled through a computer, smartphone, or tablet, allowing family members or doctors to remotely monitor patients or Skype them, often via a screen where the robot's ' face' would be. If you can't get to the nursing home to visit grandma, you can use a telepresence robot to hang out with her. A 2016 study found that users had a "consistently positive attitude" about the Giraff robot's ability to enhance communication and decrease feelings of loneliness.
A robot's appearance affects its ability to successfully interact with humans, which is why the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop a robotic nurse that looks like a huge teddy bear. RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance), also known as ‘Robear', can help patients into and out of wheelchairs and beds with its strong arms.
It's important to note that robotic nurses don't decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses (though robot doctors and surgeons may not be far off). Instead, they perform routine and laborious tasks, freeing nurses up to attend to patients with immediate needs. This is one industry where it seems the integration of robots will lead to collaboration, not replacement.
1. What does the author say about Japan?| A．It delivers the best medications for the elderly. |
| B．It takes the lead in providing robotic care. |
| C．It provides retraining for registered nurses. |
| D．It sets the trend in future robotics technology. |
| A．It has been put to use in many Japanese hospitals. |
| B．It provides specific individualized care to patients. |
| C．It does not have much direct contact with patients. |
| D．It has not revolutionized medical service in Japan. |
| A．Directly interact with patients to prevent them from feeling lonely. |
| B．Cater to the needs of patients for recovering their cognitive capacity. |
| C．Closely monitor the patients' movements and conditions around the clock. |
| D．Facilitate communication between patients and doctors or family members. |
| A．Doctors and surgeons will soon be laid off. |
| B．The robotics industry will soon take off. |
| C．Robots will not make nurses redundant. |
| D．Collaboration will not replace competition. |
Mini-Biographies Help Clinicians Connect with Patients
Bog Hall was recovering from yet another surgery in March 2014 when a volunteer walked into his hospital room.
The volunteer wasn't there to check on his lungs or breathing. Instead, she asked Hall
The interview was part of a program
When the story is finished, it
Today more than 2,000 patients at the Madison VA
Project organizers say it could change the way providers interact with patients.
10 . Over the last decade, demand for the cosmetic surgery has increased by more than 400 percent. According to Dr. Dai Davies, of the Plastic Surgery Partnership in Hammersmith, the majority of cosmetic surgery patients are not chasing physical perfection. Rather, they are driven to improve their appearance by a desire to look normal. “What we all crave is to look normal. The advertising media give us a perception(概念)of what is physically acceptable and we feel we must look like that.”
In America, the debate is no longer about whether surgery is normal; rather, it centres on what age people should be before going under the knife. New York surgeon Dr. Gerard Imber recommends “maintenance” work for people in their thirties. “The idea of waiting until one needs a heroic transformation is silly,” he says. “By then, you've wasted 20 great years of your life and allowed things to get out of hand.” Dr. Imber draws the line at operating on people who are under 18, however. “It seems that someone we don't consider old enough to order a drink shouldn't be considering plastic surgery.”
In the U. K. cosmetic surgery has long been seen as the exclusive domain(领土)of the very rich and famous. But the cost of treatment has fallen considerably, bringing all but the most advanced laser technology within the reach of most people. Dr. Davies says, “Of course, ￡3,000 for an operation is a lot of money. But it is also an investment for life which costs about half the price of a good family holiday.”
Dr. Davies suspects that the increasing sophistication(精密)of the fat injecting and removal techniques that allow patients to be treated with a local anesthetic(麻醉)in an afternoon has also helped promote the popularity of cosmetic surgery. One woman who recently paid f2, 500 for liposuction to remove fat from her thighs admitted, “Going into the clinic was so low key and effective that it whetted my appetite. Now I don't think there's any operation that I would rule out having if I could afford it.”
1. The statement “draws the line at operating on people” (Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to ________.| A．removing wrinkles from the face | B．helping people make up |
| C．enjoying operating | D．refusing to operate |
| A．cosmetic surgery, though costly, is worth having |
| B．cosmetic surgery is too expensive |
| C．cosmetic surgery is necessary even for the average person |
| D．cosmetic surgery is mainly for the rich and famous |
| A．it is wise to have cosmetic surgery under 18 |
| B．cosmetic surgery is now much easier |
| C．people tend to abuse cosmetic surgery |
| D．the earlier people have cosmetic surgery, the better they will be |
| A．the advantage of having cosmetic surgery |
| B．what kind of people should have cosmetic surgery. |
| C．the reason why cosmetic surgery is so popular. |
| D．the disadvantage of having cosmetic surgery |
