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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Sometime while I was still in high school, my mom began to have trouble breathing. She had never had asthma before; an albuterol inhaler helped for a while. Still, cold season was a nightmare, and later, so was allergy season, and every year seemed to get worse.
After college, I moved back in with my parents. She fought her way through the cold season, dutifully driving 20 miles (and later 40, …
Although the Affordable Care Act’s second enrollment period is nearly over, politicians, medical professionals, and the public still debate its implications. According to David Houle and Jonathan Fleece, one-third of all hospitals in the United States will close or be reorganized into another kind of health care provider by 2020. What will differentiate the winners from the losers? Simply put, it will be high patient satisfaction.
I wish lowering health care costs was as easy as “cost awareness,” but as one patient put it, “I never pay the first few bills, because the amount changes every time a new bill is sent.” The payment system is so fragmented that it’s hard to know what will become an expense with any given illness. Even the savviest of consumers of health care have difficulty with hospital payment systems. …
It was one of those days. I had been to the gynecologist the week prior because I somehow knew the sporadic bleeding, which I had experienced, was not a simple urinary tract infection for which I had been treated three times. My doctor did the scrapings and biopsies and had me run down the hall for an ultrasound. I’d had lots of ultrasounds during my pregnancies — …
It’s tempting to blame it all on Henry Ford. I was standing alone at the empty counter, waiting to order in a fast food joint at 9 p.m. Off to my left, three or four carloads of customers had been served before anyone noticed me and came over to ask what I wanted. After all, Henry gave us the mass-produced (and therefor affordable) automobile. I wondered if the day …
On my voice mail is a message from Donald Wyatt. He doesn’t often call, but every Monday morning he comes to see me at the Louisville, Kentucky, mental health clinic where I’m a social worker.
His message is brief: “I’m not feeling well, and I am planning a trip to either St. Louis or Elizabethtown.”
I smile, wondering at the odd pairing. Elizabethtown is a small city of 50,000 people. And, well, …
My family and close friends have done so much for me since I became chronically ill in 2001, and I’m deeply grateful to them. I’ve written this piece because there are a few important things I want them to know about how I feel.
Although this piece is personal in nature, I’ve been hanging out online for over a dozen years with other people who are chronically ill (which includes those …
She is a time traveler. She spends an hour with each patient, takes note of each symptom, listens to each emotional concern, takes every call from every worried patient, handles all emergency situations, fills every prescription, handles each every insurance concern, breaks bad news gently, does her hospital rounds, yet is never late to see those in the waiting room.
Being sick isn’t easy, but neither is being the sibling of someone who’s sick.
We’ve shared many stories about children who are living with a serious illness. We’ve talked about their disease, what life is like for them, how they cope in such dire circumstances. But in all of these conversations, one thing we’ve overlooked is telling the stories of the brothers and sisters who sometimes feel that they live in …
Dr. Peterson, the radiation oncologist, gets right to the point.
“The medical center’s tumor board has concluded that your cancer is inoperable, incurable and untreatable,” he says flatly. “Any chemotherapy or radiation treatments would be palliative in nature.”
He begins explaining the reasons behind the board’s verdict, but everything he’s saying washes out. My mind stopped working as soon as I heard the words “incurable” and “palliative.” I am sliding into shock.
It started with a mild case of nausea and got progressively worse. I became dizzy and shaky, but tried to ignore it. There was work to be done that afternoon. We were moving boxes into storage at my in-laws’ house in Michigan, and I needed to be strong. I carried boxes on unsteady feet, catching myself before bumping into walls. By early evening my legs were wobbly, and I felt …
I broke it at a roller derby scrimmage in Detroit on September 6. It was my third time representing the Glass City Rollers on the road and the beginning of a long ordeal that has given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on my body and my wellness goals.
With roughly 1 billion in Medicare reimbursement dollars being tied to patient satisfaction, it’s no wonder the focus on patient experience is swelling. Of course there are other factors fueling the focus — the proliferation of online physician ratings websites, ACOs, and CG-CAHPS to name a few.
Over the past decade I have visited 100+ different inpatient and outpatient practices. Ironically, …
Jewish history has all too often been written in tears …
I am fascinated by people and groups with the capacity to recover,
Who, having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Are not defeated by them but fight back,
Strengthened and renewed.
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, PhD,To Heal a Fractured World
In some situations, the whole idea of complete recovery from bereavement makes no sense. Bereavement can be fully expected to last a lifetime. …
