Conditions

Mental health treatment plan goals: Setting providers and patients up for success

Conditions
May 7, 2024

Treatment plans are crucial to a behavioral health practice as they can help improve client outcomes. Setting mental health treatment plan goals and objectives is a crucial aspect of the process, and providers and their clients need to work together in identifying long-term therapy goals. They should also communicate openly about the objectives used to achieve these goals.

The concept of SMART goals can be valuable here. SMART stands for Specific, …

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Virtual rehabilitation of central sensitization syndromes

Conditions
May 7, 2024

Modern medicine often fails to effectively manage complex chronic conditions. Physicians are often constrained by tightly packed clinic schedules, leaving only brief windows of time for each patient encounter. While this setup may allow for basic diagnosis and treatment planning, there is scarcely enough time for comprehensive patient education, let alone providing the necessary support, guidance, and empowerment that complex patients need.

Fortunately, the post-pandemic surge in telemedicine has brought fresh …

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Science supports it and patients want it: Bringing whole-person care to cancer treatment

Conditions
May 1, 2024

Patients, as the primary stakeholders in their own well-being, are increasingly showing a profound interest in holistic approaches to cancer care that extend beyond traditional medical treatments. Growing evidence supports this interest, showing that some whole-person and integrative approaches can improve quality of life and survival outcomes. Oncologists’ attitudes are shifting in the same direction, though with less urgency than our patients’.

We recently conducted parallel surveys of oncologists …

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Empowering patients to discuss sexual health

Conditions
April 30, 2024

I’m sure you can picture it. You’re sitting in an exam room wearing a paper gown, waiting for your health care provider to walk in the room. There are a few colorful posters on the wall about flu season, health screenings, and a discount prescription program available to patients. But all you can think about is the conversation you’re about to have. Will they bring it up? Will you ask? …

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From doctor to patient: my Sjogren’s journey and a challenge to colleagues

Conditions
April 28, 2024

As physicians, we are trained to dissect symptoms and to hunt for a diagnosis. But my own journey with Sjogren’s, like my patients’, wasn’t a textbook case. It was a puzzle with pieces scattered over decades, ignored or dismissed at each turn, including by myself.

There’s the college student, fearing the agony a simple meal might bring, never dreaming of asking why. The med student, convinced of an impending heart attack, …

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Navigating COVID: a journey from academic intensity to healing

Conditions
April 25, 2024

Springtime. Blooming trees. Green grass. Cool winds. Sunny skies. COVID.

That is where my mind wanders every year since 2020, when the season turns. I flash back to the drive between the hospital and my home. Every evening after fighting a losing battle at an academic institution hell-bent on ignoring and downplaying the horror that was about to breach our borders. I was a fighter then — maybe more in that …

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I had a (incorrect) memory screening. Have you even had one?

Conditions
April 22, 2024

Although it’s hard for me to comprehend and even harder to admit, I’m “of age” to be on Medicare. Recently, I visited my primary care physician (PCP) for a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit, a one-hour appointment that requires the inclusion of a cognitive screening—whether or not the patient or clinician suspects a decline in memory, judgment, or other brain functions.

The myriad brief screening tools, consisting of various questions and tasks, …

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Embracing vulnerability: a doctor’s journey of healing and connection

Conditions
April 21, 2024

One doctor I’ve worked with had gotten caught up in the idea of being a doctor. She realized, during her training with us, that she had stopped looking her patients in the eye. In fact, she had stopped making eye contact with her patients when she was in residency. She had to tell these two parents that their baby had died in the womb, and she did not know how …

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Breaking free from denial: Embracing the truth

Conditions
April 21, 2024

I understand it well. You persuade yourself that everything is fine. And then you persuade others that your marriage is perfect.

You’re facing a terminal illness, but you’re the exception because it surely can’t happen to you.

You’re in poor health with unexplained aches and pains, but you avoid visiting your doctors, instead praying to Jesus to alleviate your pain. To heal you of whatever it might be.

Denial. I was a workhorse. …

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Preventing amputations and saving lives starts with bringing PAD into the 21st century

Conditions
April 18, 2024

There’s a condition that is crippling Black and brown communities at a disproportionate rate and causing 400 amputations each day in the U.S. That may sound scary, but the most frightening part? A new consumer survey found that 70 percent of Americans have never heard of the most common vascular disease, peripheral artery disease (PAD) – PAD kills more people than three of the top cancers (breast cancer, …

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Optimizing IUD placement: prescribed medications and timing tips

Conditions
April 18, 2024

I’ve been inspired by a recent New York Times article that came out about IUDs, better known as intrauterine devices, and how painful and horrible some of the experiences for women have been over the years. Since writing some of these thoughts, I saw that a Cosmopolitan article recently chimed in on the topic. I figured it was time for me, as a medical professional, to share my thoughts on …

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Post-delivery complications: a glimpse into obstetric care

Conditions
April 16, 2024

The red climbs up.

She just delivered, and the arm of my gown. It seeps under the glove, soaking the cuff.

She’s still bleeding.

No worries – I call for the postpartum hemorrhage meds in the order I’ve memorized and used successfully hundreds of times before.

It’s always stopped before.

I trust my training.

She peers over the side rail toward her baby, trying to look past her partner and the nurse and the baby nurse …

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Youth are changing perceptions of death: Here’s what they want you to know

Conditions
April 16, 2024

There is a diary entry of mine (Sparks) from when I learned that the pandemic would last longer than we initially thought. 17 years old at the time, I described my feelings of fear at the thought that I may die. “I don’t know if there’s even a point to planning for the future anymore.” I go on to write that whenever I don’t get a response from a loved …

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How psychiatry fails trauma survivors

Conditions
April 15, 2024

Psychiatry has a duty to be trauma-informed, given that 50 to 60 percent of the general population, and around 90 percent of people with severe mental illness, have a lifetime history of at least one traumatic event. Yet the mental health system often falls short.

Consider involuntary hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. Losing one’s freedom can be traumatic for anyone and triggering for those with past trauma of nonconsensual experiences. …

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Overparenting: Finding solace amidst criticism

Conditions
April 14, 2024

An excerpt from A Schizoid at Smith: How Overparenting Leads to Underachieving.

“Work always lacks effort,” “Just no interest whatsoever,” “Inattention,” “Disturbance,” “Silly conduct,” the teachers’ remarks read. All those criticisms could have defined your scribe’s output.

They are rather the report card marginalia of a class clown. Another outstanding pupil with an alleged 29 detentions in one year and an unbidden nuisance in class exhibitionism. No contemporary would have ever …

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Navigating organizational dysfunction: lessons from Boeing

Conditions
April 13, 2024

If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going—at one time, public opinion of an engineering company run by engineers. Today, perception is a little different. The multinational conglomerate and defense contractor owns some staggering recent mishaps—safety systems, door plugs, unclear technical issues. A disconnect between senior management and hands-on employees is reported. Analysts consider recent events symptoms of longer-standing organizational pathology, finally coming to light.

In American business, executives win leadership positions …

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Which study is right? Investigating the impact of screening on breast cancer mortality

Conditions
April 13, 2024

A splashy headline in The Washington Post caught my attention: “Breast cancer death rate dropped 58 percent over 44 years in U.S.” A Stanford Medicine news story reports that this victorious conclusion is based on “a new multicenter study led by Stanford Medicine clinicians and biomedical data scientists.” Using observational data, clinical trial data, and simulation modeling, the researchers found that approximately 25 percent of the reduction in …

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Gene therapy’s impact on incurable illnesses

Conditions
April 11, 2024

Gene therapy has been used recently to cure previously incurable diseases, including sickle cell anemia. It is a horrible disease that I have seen so many times in the ER that it haunts me at night, especially one patient. He was a sweet man with a loving and patient demeanor who tolerated the agony he suffered on a weekly basis with saintly patience. My daughter was helping out in the …

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Rethinking teen medical consent: Navigating complex health needs

Conditions
April 11, 2024

Is it time to reconsider the age of medical consent for teens? This is a question I have been asking myself as my children are approaching 18. For many years, I’ve dreaded the thought of my medically challenging child turning 18 and suddenly being thrust into the not-so-warm and fuzzy adult world. I have nightmares about her navigating insurance. I cannot visualize my very passive and indecisive child on the …

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