Patients and caregivers writing on KevinMD about the experience of illness and the health care system from the other side of the exam table: navigating care, the doctor-patient relationship, being heard, and what patients want physicians to understand. Physicians who have become patients write here too. For the record of what pain patients and physicians have said to each other about opioids and chronic pain since 2007, with patient authors cited at the same weight as physicians, see Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words. For what patients, families, and physicians have said about dying, hospice, and the decisions families face at the end of life, see End of life: what physicians say, in their own words. For what women and the physicians who treat them have said about pregnancy, menopause, and the conditions dismissed for years, see Women's health: what physicians say, in their own words. For what physicians have said about consent, honesty, and who decides, see Medical ethics: what physicians say, in their own words.
Statistics from the Pew Research Center indicate that the majority of people use the Internet to find information on health. As online resources improve and proliferate, this fraction will continue to climb higher. There is no doubt that patients see the Internet as one tool to learn about a condition, diagnose themselves, or read about the range of treatment alternatives. Patients understand that knowledge is power. So how should patients …
While there are worse times to sprain an ankle and chip a bone than just one week before a longawaited trip to Venice, I couldn’t think of one as I sat in the emergency room for eight hours last fall.
Venice, the place of canals and not cars; ancient bridges sans escalators. How ironic that just a few days before I was crowing to my husband over my hotel coup. A …
Recently a neighbor of mine was in our local hospital for several weeks undergoing treatment for MRSA and dehydration. Polly is a woman in her late seventies who is completely alert and oriented. She lives an active and independent lifestyle and is fully capable of understanding and communicating clearly with others.
I asked her adult daughter how her mother’s experience had been so far. Given that this is a hospital that …
Before I got into medical school, while I was still in my first year of graduate school, I learned what hell was like.
The hospital was a rabbit warren. Walking down the long empty beige halls fueled my hatred for hospitals. And, of the color beige.
When I volunteered during college, I would press myself up against the wall whenever a gaggle of doctors passed by. They ruled the hospital: powerful, scary, …
On October 10, 2013, the Boston Public Library held an author event featuring Dr. Sheri Fink, she of the MD/PhD braininess that appears to be in constant triage mode; she famously skipped her own medical school graduation to assist refugees on the Kosovo-Macedonia border during the war in Kosovo. Five Days at Memorial had recently come out, and her talk that early fall evening definitely had the feel of a …
I’ve been volunteering in an emergency department of a Southern Californian community hospital for five years. I clean gurneys, stock shelves, provide support for RNs and EMTs and translate for Spanish-speaking patients. Since my job requires minimal intellectual effort, I’ve had considerable time to observe the staff and contemplate the inspiring work they do.
I’ve watched them perform heroically with sick babies, …
I went to the doctor yesterday, my semi-annual visit, as it were. These days I see a nurse practitioner, a woman. Recently, she and the practice she is a part of moved into a renovated building, state-of-the-art, they are calling it. It almost sparkles in its newness. The practice is owned by one of the large hospital corporations in our city.
Rarely are health care professionals given the opportunity to truly ponder a crucial aspect of patient care; the truth behind what it feels like to lie in a hospital bed, vulnerable, disoriented, and stripped of every basic human dignity. I have spent over 300 days as a patient in hospitals and more than three decades in and out of doctor’s offices and testing facilities. I have a profound respect for …
It was May 13th, 2012. Mother’s Day. My wife, Cyrena, was having an incredibly difficult pregnancy. She had pounding headaches, blurred vision, and searing pain throughout her body. As a matter of fact, she had been in and out of the hospital for the last two weeks. Our tiny daughter was only developed 23 weeks in gestation. Her due date was …
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.
― Thomas Paine
Dear my oncologist,
This year was my 11th anniversary as a breast cancer survivor. For the past 6 …
Imagine patient-centered care explained as a kind of updated Norman Rockwell painting. What you’d get is a recent PBS documentary, Rx: The Quiet Revolution, which, yes, uses a famous Rockwell image of a kindly family physician (Doctor and Doll) to set the stage for what follows.
Putting patient-centeredness into practice
The 90-minute film, available for viewing online, features four extraordinary stories of inspiring health care providers working in Maine, Mississippi, Alaska …
I never thought it would go on for so long — seeing Donald Wyatt, I mean. I certainly didn’t plan it this way.
More than six years ago, I retired at age sixty-six from my social work job at a mental-health agency. Donald had been my client there for about eight years.
As I was cleaning out my office, his mother called. She explained how Donald’s father had left when Donald was …
“Nobody does this …” Dr. D said as a greeting as he walked in holding the 700-word letter I had sent him some weeks before my periodic physical examination.
Half the letter addressed six issues that had arisen during the year and a half since my last physical. I thought, nearing age 62, that it’d be both efficient and prudent to provide my GP an update on my health experiences. Half …
The outdated caricature of the sexy nurse — breasts straining buttons on a form-fitting white minidress, shapely legs slipped into white heels — remains pervasive and global. Nurses say it also holds the profession back.
Imagery that sexualizes nurses presents a difficult …
“He’s just expired,” said the nurse as I approached Ray’s room in the large inner-city hospital where I work as a patient advocate. “And his wife has just arrived. Why don’t you go in?”
I found Natalie bent over Ray’s body. His hollow cheek was drenched with her tears.
“I’m so sor –”
“I told him yesterday to talk to Jesus,” Natalie interrupted, speaking quickly. “I told him if the two of them …
Managing diabetes is all about control: controlling what you eat, when you eat, and the amount of insulin you give yourself. As someone with type 1 diabetes, I understand how control over one’s blood glucose levels is vital to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. When I was hospitalized due to a car accident, however, I saw how the hospital’s desire to control my care ended up costing my insurance company more …
There are a lot of frustrated and unhappy people out there when it comes to their perception of health care today. The contemporary practice of medicine is changing, rapidly, and those changes have been a challenge for patients and physicians alike. The list of reasons for this is lengthy. Certainly physicians and hospitals are finding it difficult at times to meet all the changes and demands put on them, by …
One winter afternoon during my first year as a hospice volunteer, I drove slowly through the kind of neighborhood where the only people you see during the day are landscapers, contractors and housecleaning services and where one house is grander than the next. I was looking for the ranch house where Bobby had been living since his diagnosis.
Most people I visit, as a hospice volunteer, are my senior by 20 …
It’s hard enough to sustain a good relationship when neither partner is facing a health challenge. Illness ranks high on the list of life’s stressful events, so it’s no surprise that it can have a negative impact on a close relationship. Couples may benefit from counseling, one of the principal reasons being that the presence of a neutral party in the room can facilitate more calm and constructive communication.
