by VeronicaB, MD
We’ve all had that hysterical patient. The one that comes in during a busy shift. Grabbing at their head, their chest, their abdomen. Yelling out that they are in pain.
You know the one. They makes the nurses’ eyes roll. They add to an already chaotic scene. Other patients stop to watch as the gurney rolls by.
You debate how long you’re going to wait to …
by erdoc85, MD
When I arrived for my shift this am, I was passed off the following patient.
EMS responded to a 50-year old guy laying alongside the Interstate. He had no idea who he was or how he got there. He complained of knee pain and shoulder pain. They were kind enough to tote him to my ER where his evaluation revealed that he had a fracture …
‘Tis the season for upper respiratory infections, and since I couldn’t tell if what I had was garden-variety crud or crud that needed antibiotics, I went to the doctor. I handed over my $20 co-pay at the reception desk, where they have an electric candle burning, a tradition when a soldier is off to war. Their soldier is my family doctor, who’s in Afghanistan as a colonel with the Army …
In classic Aristotelian drama, there comes a moment when the main character is presented with an insurmountable obstacle, be it physical, psychological, spiritual, or otherwise. The nature of the obstacle forces the character to make a choice: a critical choice, an act of free will that determines the glide path of the rest of the story, irrevocably altering its arc.
So it is with the arc of illness, a medical drama …
Last year’s Mayo Transform 2010 symposium was a two-day excursion into the world of science, data, design, and the secret ingredient to health: love.
Patch Adams, MD, kicked things off in grand style. If you’ve never seen him speak, treat yourself to a hit of his energy:
In 1971, he and his compatriots opened a 24×7 hospital in a six-bedroom house to address every aspect of …
An excerpt from What Will Happen to Me?
by Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
Children need time to adjust to the separation caused by having a parent in prison. But it takes more than time. As we have heard in their voices, children also need to make sense of what has happened to them and to their parent or parents. Because of this, they have many …
by Zakari Tata, MD
Biomedical ethics and bedside communication is currently taught to medical students in a classroom mainly in the first two years. In residency it is not usually given a lot of attention. This is leading to a situation where a very basic part of daily patient interaction is not addressed. This leads to many complex problems in the hospital that lead to moral dilemmas and conflicts.
The idea needs …
by John Mooney
A recent study conducted by Dove Press Patient Intelligence Journal asked this question of patients: “Have you ever asked your physician to prescribe something different than the original recommendation?” Thirty-four percent of the respondents indicated that in fact they had. Perhaps even more interesting: of that 34 percent, 69 percent of the doctors agreed to prescribe the alternative drug when asked. Why is this important? The health …
Doctors have no trouble or compunction giving these good pieces of advice:
These all likely can augment both life quality and expectancy.
Do doctors, then, (in appropriate situations obviously) go the extra mile and tell a patient to get married? There are reasonable reports church-going adds to longevity, but with sensitivity to broaching religious beliefs, doctors may be reluctant to suggest …
Gentle nudges is a concept termed recently to describe a micro-choice movement that is beginning to carve out a sizable niche in the healthcare start-up space, and is gaining a lot of well deserved national attention. The secret ingredient relates to the power of a gentle nudge; verbal, text or otherwise to accomplish a change in the behavior of the person who receives the nudge. We are just starting to …
by Dora Calott Wang, MD
There will be more shooting rampages, like that which targeted Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson recently-as long as it is easier to get a gun than mental health care. Our current epidemic of mass shootings is but a symptom of our nation’s broken health care system. Poor access to medical care jeopardizes an individual’s health. But when the mentally ill or the seriously distressed can’t access …
An active 61 year female, who has been in my practice for 30 years, developed strange aches and pains and abdominal symptoms. My evaluation turned up nothing.
I then asked for help at the University of Miami rheumatology and gastroenterology divisions. With the help of a brilliant local gastroenterologist and rheumatologist, and after a trip to Johns Hopkins Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic, collagenous …
“How to Haggle With Your Doctor” was the title of a recent Business section column in the New York Times. This is one of many similar directives to the public in magazines, TV and Websites urging us to lower the high price of our health care by going mano a mano with our physicians about the price of tests they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Such articles provide simple, …
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by Dennis Grace
I recently received a message from the Center for Connected Health. I must admit the opening of the letter really put me off. It asked:
How do you solve the puzzle of patient compliance?
I responded to the gentleman who sent the invitation with:
Well, you might start by calling it something less offensive. Patient compliance? The phrase assumes “patient” as direct object rather than subject of participatory medicine. We …
The approval of dabigatran (Pradaxa) has been long awaited in the cardiology community. Although just about everyone agrees that a good alternative to warfarin is highly desirable, there are many remaining questions about the drug as it prepares to enter the marketplace.
Here are a few questions raised by electrophysiologist John Mandrola on his blog:
by Danielle Leach, MPA
“A true friend walks in when everyone else walks out.”
I read that on a magnet on my friend’s refrigerator recently and the simple power of that saying brought me to tears. I have learned that lesson of true friends since my son’s diagnosis of cancer in 2007.
Anyone who has faced a serious illness as a patient or a caregiver knows that you quickly learn who your …
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Every once in awhile amidst the weekly deluge of medical articles comes a show-stopper that has the potential to change the way we practice.
Rarer yet is the article that not only changes how we practice, but calls into question why we do what we do.
This recent article from the New England Journal of Medicine is just such an article. Before you bolt, let me simplify it for you.
You are a new parent. Your infant is gassy, fussy, spitty, and does not sleep much. In other words your infant is a normal baby. You are stressed, and like any good parent, you want to fix what “ails” your infant. As you stroll down the baby aisle at the grocery store, you see labels that tout words like gentle, comfort, and restful. Formula manufacturers are brilliant. They know their …
There has been an irresistible urge for people — doctors, public health officers, politicians, journalists, the usual pundits — to compare adherence to HIV treatment in resource-rich vs. resource-limited setting.
I suspect this is because the whole issue got off to a famously bad start in 2001, when then-head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Andrew Natsios said in an interview with the Boston Globe that Africans,
don’t know what Western time …
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Childhood obesity is a problem. It is a function of the foods children eat both at home and at school. The people responsible for feeding children are parents not advertisers. Running the line that it is all to do with advertising allows adults to run a “Johnny told me to” line, which would not be accepted as an excuse from a child.
It is not about blaming parents. It is about …
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