Here’s the most distressing piece of unsolicited advice I’ve received to date. It showed up in my Inbox two days after I’d completed a course of radiation for breast cancer. The email was in response to an article I’d written about this new, unexpected turn my life had taken; the article included the fact that, at the time, I was in the middle of a course of radiation treatment. Here’s …
4 ways to handle unsolicited health advice
It is a pattern oft repeated in a lifetime:
You go to the doctor’s office, get a prescription, and go home.
You go to the urgent clinic, get care, and go home.
You go the hospital, get better, and go home.
But some people are very surprised when they go to inpatient hospice, are stabilized and told to go home.
Inpatient hospice could be within a hospital, nursing home, or a dedicated hospice facility. The …
Ease the transition to hospice care in the family home
An excerpt from How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide. Copyright 2015 by Toni Bernhard. Excerpted with permission from Wisdom Publications.
“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept the way things are.”
– Karen Maezen Miller
A well-known Buddhist story known as the Mustard Seed helped me …
Turning “Why me?” into “Why not me?”
After having an echocardiogram recently, I saw a cardiologist, which seemed the prudent thing to do. I was not symptomatic, and I think the echo was pretty much unremarkable — to use a bit of doctor’s lingo. I saw the word “mild” here and there in the report describing processes of my heart’s functions. When you’re over seventy-three, “mild” sounds pretty all right. Better than the word “acute,” I figure. …
Choosing the right cardiologist takes longer than you think
If you weren’t aware of the prevalence and severity of diagnostic errors, (misdiagnosis, missed diagnosis, delayed diagnosis) maybe you should be now.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a new report called, Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. The report cited that most people will experience one or more diagnostic errors over their lifetimes. It also revealed that diagnostic errors contribute to 10 percent of patient deaths and account for up …
Tips for patients to help ensure an accurate diagnosis
Since 1921, the Miss America competition has ignited public debate. Typically though, the controversy doesn’t revolve around a contestant’s attempt to convey the positive influences nurses have on their patients. Contestant Kelley Johnson’s decision to perform a monologue for the talent portion of the Miss America program was a surprising departure from traditional acts generally showcased. Her recent appearance in scrubs and a ponytail prompted ridiculing banter between hosts on …
Nurses save more lives than opera singers
An excerpt from How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide. Copyright 2015 by Toni Bernhard. Excerpted with permission from Wisdom Publications.
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
– Marcel Proust
For the most part, I’ve adjusted to my new …
Beware of “Good Old Days Syndrome”
Dear health care industry:
I think we have a serious problem, and I think we both deserve some of the blame. Over the last couple of decades, I the patient have been demanding many things of you: reduced wait times, increased access to medications and procedures, more luxurious and colorful accommodations, and numerous scheduling conveniences among other things.
Meanwhile, I have watched as an industry long-based on the revered call of service …
Dear health care industry: Give me what I need, not what I want
“Don’t ever land in a teaching hospital on a holiday weekend, they always staff up with residents,” noted a close friend who was all too familiar with the inner workings of hospitals.
That statement sticks in my head heavily today as I prepare to visit my father’s year-old grave. My father, a man that was involved in the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and private sector research societies for decades, …
Don’t land in the teaching hospital on a holiday weekend
On July 3, 2015, at approximately 2:00 a.m., I was awakened by my mobile phone ringing. I looked at the number the call was originating from and was fearful this was the call I was dreading to receive. My mother’s long-term care facility was calling, and the news was not good. My mother was found without a pulse and was rushed to a local hospital.
I called the emergency department of …
3 ways to improve your delivery of bad news to patients
Have you ever been a patient? Yeah, me too. Many newly insured Americans will visit doctors’ offices this year. The average time you — or anyone — has with a primary care provider is 15 minutes. What’s a sick person to do?
Happier patients make happier doctors. Here’s a helpful list that I’ve developed to help patient visits go smoother:
1. Pick three questions or concerns that you have for your doctor and write …
10 helpful ways to improve your patient experience
For years, and especially as he entered his nineties, my father kept begging me not to “dump” him into a nursing home. He had seen too many of his cronies abandoned in this way by family members; his visits with these friends left him feeling depressed and hopeless for days. I assured Dad that I’d never put him in a facility.
It was an easy promise to make. I didn’t want …
Bringing Dad home from the nursing facility was the right decision
I am one of many people today “living” with cancer. I want to focus on the impact cancer has on my personal finances, and this is probably true for any chronic illness, not just cancer.
First, you often have to give up your job. While undergoing chemo, most of us don’t have the energy for a full time job. And if you do …
This is what it’s like to face recurrent cancer while going broke
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The woman lying on the transport cot in the examination room was terrified. I could see it plainly in her eyes, but there was no time to stop and comfort her.
I was a young, recently graduated nurse in a busy urban emergency room, struggling to keep up with its daily array of shootings, stabbings and crises. ER nurses hustled. We dealt with …
She became a hospice nurse because of this story
I thank God every day that a doctor had the audacity to say to me, “You are going to have to learn to live with this.”
I was 21. Newly married. And covered, from head to toe, in a burning, painful, itchy rash.
I was sitting on a table, decked in a gown, with my husband in a chair by my side. I was …
Humanize your physician: They are real people
Well, decision time was here and it looked as if Bill would choose surgery, and why not, with the doctors liberally throwing around the word “cure.'” The various tests Bill endured, breathing tests, echocardiogram and MRI of the brain, were all within tolerable ranges, we were told. The oncologist noted some marks in the brain that suggested mini-strokes, but Bill didn’t hear this or it didn’t register with him, or …
Surgery in a patient with schizophrenia. Did it affect decision making?
November of last year found me living as best I could with several health issues, the most debilitating of which stems from never having recovered from a serious viral infection in 2001. I’ve been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a little understood and much-misunderstood illness. It keeps me virtually housebound. For the most part, I’ve made peace with feeling sick all …
You can never be prepared for a diagnosis of breast cancer
Ask anyone connected with health care these days to provide a definition for patient engagement and you will likely receive as many answers as there are agendas surrounding the discipline.
While patient engagement has evolved as a critical strategy in support of the ultimate goal of creating improved health for a total population, you would think that a mandate for a unified …
Patient engagement is in search of a definition
A version of this speech was delivered May 14, 2015 to the graduating class at the University of Manitoba.
I’m not a doctor. I never will be. I’m a lowly journalist. I tell stories. For almost 30 years, I’ve tried to help Canadians understand their health system and their medical care.
In that time, I’ve seen tremendous advances in medicine and I’ve met, quite literally, thousands of health professionals, from students to …
We have built a sickness care system rather than a health system
In 2008, at the age of 22, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and began my experience with the American health care system and how to care for myself in it. When I was in the process of diagnosing my illness, I went to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland to meet with an endocrinologist and have my ultrasound results interpreted. …
Managing your health is difficult on a student’s budget
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