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.
It’s not a new phenomenon. In fact, it’s troubling how old and widespread it is.
But when TV news departments partner with, and sell news time to local medical centers, you can take the Radio-Television Digital News Association’s code of ethics and throw it out the window.
Blythe Bernhard reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “In St. Louis, the latest media/hospital partnership is a campaign from Barnes-Jewish Hospital and local …
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When TV news departments partner with local medical centers
by Dennis Grace
The Internet’s been rife, lately, with discussions of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and its alternative, experience-based medicine (which, to avoid conclusion, I’ll call XBM).
Look up either phrase on Google if you want more details, but be warned, it’s like trying to get a sip from Niagara Falls. Ideally, though, EBM is guided by information generated by studies conducted as rigorous, double-blind, randomized, …
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Evidence versus experience based medicine for patients
What is the year 2011’s best diagnostic and therapeutic medical device?
Is it the PET scan with special bells and whistles to detect early Alzheimer’s?
Is it the robotic surgery that reams out the worst prostate cancers remotely?
Is it the Total Genomic Analysis that predicts what your genetic future holds?
Is it the GI endoscope that checks out your innards from stem to stern?
Is it the latest drug-eluting stent that promises to …
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The best diagnostic medical device is right in your own home
I am all for breastfeeding. Without doubt, breast milk is incredible stuff. And it’s free. Who complains about free?
Nevertheless, somewhere along the way, the campaign for breastfeeding has spun out of control. The topic has morphed into yet another competition in the arena of parenthood. Mothers boast about breastfeeding. Mothers compare how long they nurse. Mothers compare how much milk can be pumped in one sitting. Mothers are made …
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Let’s stop the war between breastfeeding and formula feeding
As undergraduate premedical students, we learned about narrative medicine by chance in a New York Times article titled “Learning to Listen.”
After exploring the research of Dr. Rita Charon, we were both drawn to the new field and what it had to offer us as future medical professionals. The Times article explains, “Through literature, [Dr. Charon] learned how stories are built and told, and translated that …
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Narrative medicine means more effective healthcare
Children are getting fatter because they are not allowed to run around and play. This comes from parents wanting to wrap kids in cotton wool — also known as helicopter parenting.
There is a new push to get children to walk to school. This is something which previous generations just did but has largely disappeared over the last 25 years. There are many reasons for this but one of them …
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Why children are getting fatter
My family doctor recently announced he’s retiring from medicine after 37 years, and my husband and I were his patients for more than 18 of those years. We had a lot of one-offs before finding him, but he was worth the wait. I want to explain why he inspired our loyalty.
He saved my husband’s mobility. A glass coffee pot separated from its handle and a shard went straight into …
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Thoughts after your family doctor retires
The Disease Management Care Blog attended a professional hockey game recently and it must say it was quite the spectacle.
While the athleticism on the ice was quite remarkable, the real wonderment involved the hometown fans. Questionable referee calls prompted thousands of all ages to chant phrases that the DMCB has not recently read in any medical journals, while the willingness of grown men to display, in stereo fashion, obscene gestures …
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Should doctors be blamed for bad decisions by patients?
The World Health Organization recently announced that cell phones “may possibly” cause cancer.
Now, I’m neither a researcher or statistician, and personally think the jury is still out on this one. I’m not going to take sides.
But here is what I am pissed off about. Notice that the story said “may possibly” cause cancer. But the way we think, it somehow becomes “does cause cancer,” and so we panic, and hold …
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The nightmare of medical research in the lay press
by Gayle A. Sulik, PhD
In response to increased publicity surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s questionable trademark and marketing activities, the organization published an official statement on its website, titled: “Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Sees Trademark Protection as Responsible Stewardship of Donor Funds.”
According to the statement, Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has never sued other charities or put other non-profits out of business, and the …
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How Susan G. Komen for the Cure affects other cancer non-profits
Ready to learn more about nurses who work beyond the bedside? Nurses who work in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab (CCL) play an important role in cardiac care. Amy Sellers, RN blogs at Nursing Influence and graciously agreed to give us a peek at what a nurse is responsible for doing in the CCL.
Amy has worked in the Cath Lab for about 6 months now. She previously worked in cardiovascular intensive …
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Nurses who work in the cardiac catheterization lab
Do you spend 8 hours in front of a screen at work? Do you then spend your free time watching TV or poking around the internet when you get home? How much time are you spending cooking healthy meals to eat with friends and family? How much time are you doing physical activities that make you happy?
A recent study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology entitled, Screen-Based …
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Work should be about optimizing your productivity and health
“The most important thing I learned was that different doctors know different things: I need to ask my internist different questions than I do my oncologist.”
This was not some sweet ingénue recounting the early lessons she learned from a recent encounter with health care. Nope. It was a 62-year-old woman whose husband has been struggling with multiple myeloma for …
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Guiding patients through fragmented health care
Compliance. I really hate that word! The general impression given throughout the blogosphere is that patients:
- don’t take their medicine
- prevaricate
A few typical quotes:
- Comp-LIE-ance: ”There are only 2 settings where compliance actually takes place; controlled substances and patients with high copays/no free ride.“
- On Your Own With Multiple Meds: “Even though people ‘know’ they should take their pills as directed, for the most part, they don’t.“
It drives me crazy to read accusations such …
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Compliance happens when it’s the patient’s treatment plan
My wife had just finished meeting with her medical oncologist for her bi-annual check-up at MD Anderson’s Thoracic Clinic.
We were sitting in an area called “the Park” rehashing what her doctor had said when a mother and her daughter sat down at our table. There were lots of empty seats in area but for some reason they decided to sit with us. Call it serendipity. …
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Benefits of chance meetings with other cancer patients
If you have been at your nursing job for a while, you’ve probably almost forgotten.
Forgotten what it was like to come in to the healthcare system you now work for and realize there are hundreds of new protocols for you to learn and adhere by as a nurse. After years of routine, you now go about your day as if you actually have some choice in the way you give …
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How protocols are taking the decisions away from nurses
Sixty five years ago my maternal grandmother, having experiencing months of fatigue, abdominal discomfort and weight loss, underwent exploratory abdominal surgery, the only truly diagnostic tool available at the time.
One brief look by the surgeon told him everything he needed to know: her liver and omentum were riddled with tumor, clearly advanced, with the primary source unknown and ultimately unimportant. He quickly closed her up and went to speak with …
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The patient is a partner in their illness management and health maintenance
An elderly woman sent home from the hospital develops a life-threatening infection because she doesn’t understand the warning signs listed in the discharge instructions.
A man confused by an intake form in a doctor’s office reflexively writes “no” to every question because he doesn’t understand what is being asked.
A young mother pours a drug that is supposed to be taken by mouth into her baby’s ear, perforating the eardrum.
And a man in …
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Poor health literacy linked with unnecessary health complications
