A thought, a word, a story. Simple concepts in a complex world, but they can have a profound effect on how we live our lives. Today’s world may seem, at times, a blur. We are inundated every day with headlines of natural disasters, man’s inhumanity to man, and simply, just life slapping us in the face. How can we maintain a sense of sanity and security when the world around …
Informed consent is the cornerstone of medical ethics. And every physician must defend this sacred principle from every form of evil that would seek to dismantle, degrade and debase it. If informed consent is the sun, then privacy, confidentiality, dignity, and trust are planets that go around it. For without informed consent, the descent of health care into amorality is inevitable, and the doctor-patient relationship is doomed to ruination, oblivion, …
The dismantling of informed consent is a disaster
I sit before you and others like you, in silence, anxious about what I might be told. You deliver a litany of questions to my countenance as I sit in a chair beside you. Your attention is diverted to the cold and detached computer screen where my responses are entered without you ever noticing the fear in my eyes. There is no acknowledgment to indicate a level of understanding of …
One day I found out that it was National Limerick Day. I didn’t even know there was a National Limerick Day. I investigated other “days” and found out that September 7th was National Grateful Patient Day. So, this grateful patient will start her post with a limerick:
There was a patient in a flimsy gown,
Who was also wearing a frown.
She was getting a bad cold,
And feeling cold and old,
She wanted another …
Happy National Grateful Patient Day!
Darkness covers the sky so that no light can enter the soul. Only a silhouette of life is possible — only a shell devoid of existence, devoid of meaningful experiences. Living is like walking in a dense forest where its canopy envelopes all who dare to enter. The falling rain is black. It covers everything like a shroud. The air is so heavy, breathing is, at times, too much to …
Physicians are at the frontline of depression
After many years of being mostly housebound by chronic illness (which includes chronic pain), here are a few of the dilemmas I’ve faced over and over. I’m confident that I’m not alone in my “should I/shouldn’t I?” world.
Do I accept an invitation from a friend to get together or do I refuse it?
If I refuse the invitation, depending on who issued it, it may be the last one I’ll receive …
Should I or shouldn’t I? The dilemmas faced by the chronically ill.
What if it is your parent? Your spouse? Your child?
Imagine supporting a loved one through a journey of serious illness. You go to all the appointments, know all the medications, almost feel the aches and pains as if they were our own. You repeat the same thing over and over again to one doctor after another making sure nothing slips through the cracks. Did somebody write this down? Isn’t this …
Caregivers have the power to prevent medical error
If one more person tells me to be sure to take care of myself, I’m going to bury my face in a pillow and scream.
“Go for a walk, take a vacation,” they advise. I know they’re trying to help, but really? Giving me one more thing to do? Oh well, they’re just doing the best they can.
I moved my folks across the country, from Florida to Washington State, and into …
The caregiver’s mantra: doing the best I can
I remember reciting a phrase during my childhood that goes something like this, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” So as I would walk back and forth to school, I would make a conscious effort to avoid any and all cracks in the sidewalks for fear of bringing unwarranted harm to my mother. This was a pretty difficult task to accomplish since in my small hometown, cracks in …
Don’t let fear harm your health
Generally speaking, patients and physicians are working towards good health. While many patient expectations can be unreasonable, others are practical; this article amalgamates them. Can you identify the absurd demands?
But multiply half of the listed expectations by hundreds or thousands of patients, and we begin to understand why there is such a high rate of physician burnout. Bilateral empathy lowers expectations.
Bedside manner. Don’t accept a walk-in patient and leave us waiting …
Bilateral empathy lowers patient expectations
To complement Aaron Lacy’s post on treating colleagues with respect, I’d like to expand that concept to include treating patients with respect too. That means if a patient says she’s freezing, and adding insult to injury, has been sick as well, adjust the thermostat a little, please, even if you as the doctor isn’t cold. When a stray cat came to our door in the dead of winter, …
Let’s order a round of respect: for both patients and physicians
I agree wholeheartedly with a post by Annahieta Kalantari expressing the idea that finding a new physician job is like dating. A patient looking for a new MD can be just as uncertain, unnerving, intimidating and stressful.
First, you hear the dreaded words from a receptionist, often sorrowfully saying, “I’m sorry, we’re not in your network this year.” Then, the nerves begin. Maybe a friend recommends a doctor …
Finding a new doctor is like dating
Announce to friends that you have cancer, and they will probably react with sympathy and compassion. Tell them that you’ve broken your leg, and they’ll offer to get your groceries and drive you to medical appointments.
Share that you suffer from depression — and the sound of silence will fill your head.
Depression has been my companion for as long as I can remember. My maternal grandmother, who immigrated to this country …
Why do we say “curiosity killed the cat?”
Isn’t curiosity what drives people to ask insightful questions? To keep an open mind? And to continue learning at age 6 or 60, alike?
Curiosity is what sets apart people who are fixed in their opinions and beliefs and those who adjust in light of new information. Recently, I read an article in The New Yorker that suggested that Donald Trump doesn’t read books …
What does curiosity have to do with patient safety?
Many months have passed since the spring day when I was hit with the news from my yearly mammogram, but those typewritten words are forever etched in my memory: “The density appears greater in left breast.”
My doctor comforted me with statistics showing that mammograms aren’t 100 percent accurate — but she also lost no time in sending me to a surgeon named Dr. Prewitt. Upon meeting him, I immediately felt …
Do not underestimate the power of touch
In mid-February, thousands flocked to the opening of Black Panther, a highly anticipated film for a multitude of reasons. The most salient of these is its depiction of an African king as Marvel’s and cinematic screen’s first culturally-affirming black superhero. In fact, Black Panther’s success is due to its emergence as a counter-narrative to painful and dysfunctional representations of black life. By normalizing the presence of black royals, diplomats, and …
I’ve written a lot about the tough challenges that those of us with chronic illness face (chronic illness includes chronic pain). I thought it would be constructive to take what I tend to think of as negatives and see if I could turn them into positives. Sometimes I had to dig deep to turn a negative into a positive; nevertheless, here are the results of my experiment.
Negative: I don’t look …
Turning negatives into positives when you’re chronically ill
A T-shirt advertised online reads, “Keep calm and let the patient care coordinator handle it.” The shirt must be popular, or maybe just a source of gallows humor, for those engaged in this noble pursuit.
But the underlying question of who is coordinating our medical care is a serious one. By one estimate, inadequate care coordination costs between $25 to $45 billion annually. For the individual patient with a chronic illness, …
Care coordination is more than a T-shirt slogan
Can you imagine flying home from a family vacation and having a first-time anaphylactic reaction in the air? Did you know that airlines are not required to stock their planes with easy-to-use auto-injectors that any adult or child could operate?
Francine’s family was flying back home from vacation on American Airlines. Her 10-year-old son, who had no history of food allergy, ate the warm mixed nuts they served and immediately had stomach …
When your first food allergy reaction takes place in the air
Thanks to a surprising and devastating diagnosis, I know more than most physicians about what it’s like to live with the brain cancer known as glioblastoma, everything from self-titrating my anti-epileptic medications to making sure the right ICD-10 code appears on my MRI referrals. As much as I’d rather not have this expertise, I’ve …
A patient’s expertise is often undervalued
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