Ask your doctor. I think most of us would agree that is good advice, at least up to the point that we find ourselves sitting half naked on an exam table in our doctor’s office. Then the doctor walks in and for some reason many of us just “clam up.”
Patient question-asking during the primary care office visit was and continues to be an “index” of patient health information …
Patient questions during doctor visits are uncommon
In my pediatric practice, it is not uncommon for a mother, given the time, to move quickly away from telling me about her child’s behavior problem, to talk about herself, sharing vivid stories of emotional distress from her own life. I may suggest that this distress could make it difficult for her to deal with the challenging behavior of her child.
Rather than finding this statement helpful, she might collapse back …
Guilt used in a positive manner can help with parenting
It’s hard for Cassandra Mathieu to describe her mother’s cooking without mentioning the salt shaker.
“I remember my mother used to cook with seasoning salt, garlic salt, every kind of salt you can imagine,” she said recently. “We grew up on salt.”
Cassandra grew up fixing food the same way, adding generous amounts of salt to dishes she prepared and to her food at the table. At age 42, she discovered her …
10 salt reducing tips that can lower your blood pressure
I’m becoming an amateur archeologist. The hilltop where we live is strewn with arrowheads and bits of Native American pottery shards. I have slowly, surely, trained my eye to find them. There is little flint here; so most of the pieces I find were made of quartz. (Hard to work with, but remarkably beautiful and almost always a brilliant white.)
My kids and I walk the red-clay paths and look down …
Archeology skills work in medicine
Thanks all who responded to my recent USA Today piece, Patient-satisfaction surveys have drawbacks.
But in a letter published in the paper yesterday, a reader from Oklahoma City was quite unhappy with my take.
Mark R. Heaton writes, somewhat angrily:
Dr. Kevin Pho’s recent opinion piece was not only arrogant but also grossly naive.
His basic premise was twofold:
• Doctors know best and should therefore ignore patient feedback regarding possible tests and treatments.
• …
Patient input in their treatment should be valued by doctors
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Kristina Fiore, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Taxing junk food may help reduce obesity and improve health, researchers have found.
Patients got significantly less of their energy (calories) from soda or pizza when there was a 10% increase in the price of either (P<0.001), Penny Gordon-Larsen, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues …
Taxing junk food may improve your health
At my office we provide care for a fair number of patients without medical insurance. Sometimes we are faced situations with no good options.
At a patient visit, often times the diagnosis is not clear without doing some diagnostic tests other than the history and physical exam. Many of these tests are ordered from sources outside the office, where I have little or no control over the cost of the test …
Patient costs when making medical decisions
When I make rounds with my students and interns, I always try to sneak in a poem at the end. I think poetry is important because it helps convey the parts of the medical experience that don’t make it into textbooks. It’s important because it teaches creative thinking—something of immense value to doctors.
It’s important because interpreting metaphors is a critical clinical skill in diagnosis; patients’ symptoms often present in metaphorical …
Poetry that your patient can appreciate
Many non-correctional health care providers will also treat inmates from time to time. This may occur in the office or hospital. How can one best approach the challenges of working with the incarcerated in order to deliver the best possible care while simultaneously managing risk?
1. Treat the patient with respect. Not submissive respect, but mutual respect — the way we all want to be treated. I believe that this principle …
7 ways inmates can receive quality medical care from doctors
Part four of a series. See also parts one, two, and three.
When dealing with your doctor’s biases, you have on your side a fact I firmly believe to be true: most doctors want to do a good job and help their patients as best they can. So what exactly can you do to maximize your doctor’s ability to help you?
1. Position your symptoms and requests carefully. Don’t demand medications …
Help doctors to best care for their patients
In the Tony award winning play God of Carnage two couples meet in an elegant living room for an ostensibly civilized conversation about the aggressive act of one couple’s child against the other’s. The meeting soon degenerates to reveal the underbelly of conflict in the two marriages. Husband and wife hurl insults, precious items and even themselves with escalating rage. We see, as they attempt in vain to focus on …
Aggressive behavior in children and the family dynamic
The Framingham Heart Study is perhaps the most famous long-term medical study. As every medical student learns, starting in 1948, the lifestyle habits of thousands of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts were followed to determine important risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
It is because of this study that your physician can, with a few keystrokes, predict with great accuracy your risk of having a heart attack within the next 10 years and …
Obesity treatment in family members should be contagious
Ideally, the medical decisions doctors make for their patients should be free of any outside influence.
But for regular readers of this blog, we know that’s not always the case.
A 2010 HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey identifies some factors that may influence a physician’s medical decision. Here are some of the results.
Pressure from patients was a significant influence, with only 17.9% of doctors saying it wasn’t a factor. Doctors often …
Medical decision making is influenced by patients, lawsuits, and money
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Imagine that as a child you thought you had been born in the body of the wrong gender. If you were biologically male, in your mind you really thought of yourself as female. Likewise, if you were born in a girl’s body, you thought that you were actually a boy.
Yes, you were probably more interested in children’s role-playing games more often associated with the opposite gender as well, but the …
Transgender patients face significant challenges in prison
by Patrice Villars
Recently, a physician colleague expressed her concern about signing routine hospice admission orders for her elderly patient with end stage heart failure. The routine ‘as needed’ (PRN) orders included phenobarbital, pentobarbital, haloperidol, lorazepam, and morphine. “The hospice nurses know more about this than I do, don’t they?” she said.
Yesterday, a longtime palliative care nurse told me she didn’t want to put her mother with end stage heart …
A nurse practitioner is valuable in hospice and palliative care
“I’ll be back in a little while, Hon’. Will you be okay without me?” the frail old woman asked of her husband. She was standing at the front door and breathing heavily.
“I’ll be fine,” her husband replied from his wheelchair. His voice sounded as weak as his body looked – emaciated, scaly, and full of cancer. “I’m sorry I can’t come with you.”
The woman opened the front door. A gust …
A beautiful Valentine’s Day patient story
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Chris Emery, MedPage Today Contributing Writer
Condoms that don’t fit properly are more likely to break, slip off, and decrease the pleasure of both partners during sex, which may discourage their use and undermine their public health benefits, a survey found.
Ill-fitting condoms were reported by 44.7% of the men polled. They were more likely than …
Condoms don’t work all the time, and here’s why
by Lockup Doc
Physicians learn a lot about many different topics, both in medical training and in practice. However, there are some life lessons that we never learn as well as when we become patients ourselves.
When I was 13 or 14 years old, I regularly interacted with 2 different physicians with disparate interpersonal styles. Little did I know then that these seemingly meaningless encounters would indelibly shape my own beliefs about …
How doctors can improve patient interactions
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Liz O’Brien
Exactly whom are we honoring on Presidents (or is it President’s) Day?
A. George Washington
B. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln
C. All presidents
The answer is more complicated than you’d ever expect. Probably A is most correct, but if it were up to me, I’d pick C.
Certainly every one of these 43 men has earned the …
Why being President of the United States is a health hazard
Not literally, of course.
In an interesting marketing concept, some would call it a gimmick, a Texas hospital is utilizing speed dating concepts to match patients with obstetricians.
I like it.
As chronicled by the American Medical News, here’s what happens:
It involves setting aside a room for two 30-minute sessions over the lunch hour. About five or six physicians sit at tables while a dozen or so potential patients rotate through. Every five …
How speed dating can help the doctor patient relationship
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