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.
See …
You’re taking my blood pressure wrong. Listen to this patient.
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 …
What you say matters: An insensitive comment in the ICU
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 …
My wife wanted to fire our pediatrician. What can we learn from this?
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 …
The time I realized I kicked cancer’s ass
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 …
Putting patient-centeredness into practice
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 …
How will I know that you’re not dead?
“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 …
An excerpt from The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital.
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 job requiring …
The truth about sex in the hospital
“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 …
The line between being compassionate and being unprofessional
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 …
How can the health of patients coexist with patient autonomy?
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 …
Be your own patient advocate. Here’s how.
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 …
From a hospice volunteer: Yes, you make a difference
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.
What follows …
Tips for resolving conflicts when a partner is chronically ill
Perhaps we thought we could get away with ignoring the relationship between doctors and patients. The Kaiser Health News article, “Efforts to Instill Empathy Among Doctors is Paying Dividends,” explains why we can’t.
Patient satisfaction scores and reimbursements aside, this relationship was once considered the cornerstone of quality care.
Doctors are healers but in recent years many have been reduced to diagnosticians, electronic medical records (EMR) data entry clerks, and health …
The doctor-patient relationship with dying patients
To the staff overseeing my medically-complex child,
My child has been in this world much longer than you expected; thus I’ve been in this relationship with you much longer than I expected. If I could break up with you and find someone new, believe me I would (I’m sure so would you some days). But that isn’t possible; we’re in a dysfunctional relationship. If we recognize this together and just come to an …
A message to those taking care of my medically-complex child
In 2010, I became a hospice volunteer.
My mother had died of a brain tumor five years earlier at age eighty-seven. I saw being a hospice volunteer as a way to express my gratitude for my mother’s compassionate hospice care and to help other caregivers to weather a loved one’s passing. And, as a former reporter and writer, I thought I could help people to write their life stories, if they …
A phrase as a metaphor for dying itself
I consider myself a pretty savvy and resourceful consumer. I know how to solve problems that come up in the day to day situations we all face. I have navigated my way through more than a few complicated and sensitive financial situations. Add to that my ability to be persistent, and you would think that I could figure out a simple denial of an insurance claim with ease, right? In …
Don’t fall victim to health insurance denials
I went to the retired firefighters dinner last week and had a great time, probably because I happened to land on a table full of contemporaries: men who worked at pretty much the same time I did.
Inevitably, conversation turned to our memories of some of the older firefighters we had to deal with as we worked our way up the seniority ladder; “getting time on” is what it was called. …
What a retired firefighter has to do with health care today
You don’t have a second chance to make a great first impression.
If twenty random numbers were read aloud, most people would remember the first few numbers and the last few numbers. We tend to remember beginnings and endings. It is the same with patients; they tend to recall what they hear at the beginning and …
How to make a great first impression with patients
If I could drop our health insurance altogether, I would. With a high deductible of $4,000 for in-network providers, my family of three has yet to reach our collective deductible over the last three years. This means we have to pay out of pocket for medical care until we reach that amount. To make matters worse, our health insurance premiums increased by 10 percent, forcing us to find a less …
Is health insurance the new paternalism in health care?
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