Ebola has riveted our attention: It’s a deadly disease with no known cure, and as is true of most infectious diseases, it’s easy to imagine how it could become a global pandemic and threaten us directly. For what it’s worth, though, here is what the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us about Ebola:
1. The Ebola virus is not spread through:
What’s the right way to think about Ebola?
Years later, I now wonder if I overstepped my boundaries.
Nancy was a pleasure to have as a patient. A physician assistant in her early twenties, we often chatted amiably during visits. Our conversations randomly ambled between personal and professional topics. She recently married and was looking forward to having children. Her gynecologic history was complicated and after a period of months of unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant, she visited a …
The helplessness of being a parent
Ebola virus has grabbed headlines since the epidemic started in West Africa nearly a year ago. The death toll is estimated at 4,500 people, and the epidemic continues to spread. One person infected in Liberia returned to Texas with the disease and died, infecting maybe 2 health care workers.
Ebola is a nasty virus, surely, with a case fatality rate of 80 percent. Overall health and nutrition as well as living …
Ebola! But don’t forget about the flu.
The observation status problem has continued to grow both larger and worse.
My hospitalist colleagues and I are caring for patients in hospital beds in the exact same way as other patients in the hospital, but we are told that we must give them the designation called observation status. CMS recognizes observation status as outpatient care, like seeing a patient in a walk-in clinic.
We don’t decide to make a patient observation …
Hospital observation status: The truth must come out
The other day, I got into an argument with my parents about choosing wedding décor — and I blame it on my surgical training. My parents had borne the brunt of the work for the previous eleven months. allowing me to focus on my elective surgery rotation, flying to fellowship interviews, publishing my first article, and putting out the types of …
The problem with wedding planning when you’re a surgeon
Recently, reports surfaced that two Silicon-valley giants, Apple and Facebook, are covering elective oocyte cryopreservation, a.k.a. egg freezing, for its female employees. Silicon Valley, like medicine, has a shortage of women at the top and it is presumed that this move will attract more women to enter — and stay — in the field of technology.
As both a recent graduate of medical …
Why company-paid egg-freezing threatens medicine and motherhood
Among reams of coverage on the Ebola outbreak, Politico just published a characteristic story with the headline, “In the world of Ebola, no room for error.” The only problem is that is as soon as you introduce a human element to any system, there will be error.
That’s the reality that health care leaders across the United States are grappling with now in a simultaneous effort both to tighten the health …
The lessons hospitals and physicians can learn from Ebola
There will never be any compromise acceptable to the die hard defenders of psychiatry or to its most fanatic critics.
Some inflexible psychiatrists are blind biological reductionists who assume that genes are destiny and that there is a pill for every problem.
Some inflexible anti-psychiatrists are blind ideologues who see only the limits and harms of mental health treatment, not its necessity or any of its benefits.
I have spent a good deal …
A civil war in psychiatry: Is there common ground?
As the patient satisfaction movement races full steam ahead, the time is perfect to regroup and define what this whole thing is really all about.
Anyone involved in health care, and particularly hospital care, knows that the term “patient satisfaction” has become a buzz phrase recently. Sadly too it’s also evolved into a bit of a bumper sticker in hospital administration circles …
Patient satisfaction: Should that be the real mission of health care?
After reading a book about conducting good business, you’ll likely review the concept of adequately meeting demands for clients or consumers. Whether a company is thriving due to lower pricing or higher quality, in the world of business, the golden rule is provide value or go bankrupt.
One industry has seemingly remained immune from this concept, however. In the past few decades, especially, health care has unequivocally failed in …
Customer service in health care: It’s coming. Are you ready?
There are times when a common cliché may be the best way to describe academic medicine in today’s medical centers. In fact, I have heard patients and their families complain about this, way too often. Simply put, there are many occasions when it seems that there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
When someone gets admitted to the hospital, chronic problems …
Too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil medical care
It finally happened. After years of sitting at John’s bedside through multiple serious bike crashes, I had one of my own. I’ve had plenty of time to build up a ridiculous amount of smugness about why he crashes and I don’t. “John is reckless; Staci is cautious. John rides like an airplane engine on a shopping cart; Staci uses her head.”
I …
A physician undergoes hip surgery: 10 observations from bedside
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there.
Where most it promises.
– Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
It may seem a strange thing to say, but I believe the U.S. suffers from unrealistic expectations. We expect government, health, and hospital officials to get things right the first time around. This is unrealistic. People, and believe it or not, including politicians, are never perfectly competent in things they are never experienced before. Disease …
Ebola: We suffer from unrealistic expectations
ADVERTISEMENT
A month ago I published a post predicting that paramedics, emergency nurses, and emergency physicians would be exposed to patients with Ebola and have difficulty picking out these patients from the many other patients who present to the ED with similar symptoms. In light of the events in Dallas, Texas, this seems prophetic, but it is really not so difficult to explain (despite the finger-pointing from a horde of outraged reporters …
Ebola and the psychology of contagious disease
What happens when your faith, commitment and professional integrity collide with great personal risk? This is what I imagine is happening across the country to physicians, nurses and other health care workers as we all face the Ebola tragedy.
Sure, people dying in far away Africa bring an ache to our hearts. Admiration for those working with aide groups brings the passing thought so easily conjured from the safety of our …
Ebola causes a crisis of commitment in physicians
Ebola is frightening but not for the reason you may imagine.
A little over a year ago Asiana Flight 214 crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport resulting in 181 injuries and 3 deaths. As an emergency medicine resident, this fast-forwarded my training as I took care of many of the patients arriving in our emergency department. I left that day inspired that I had the education and training to …
Ebola presents a new paradigm from the ER
An excerpt from Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way.
Patients’ definition of their own experience is quite divergent. We ask patients for feedback, and the results are fascinating. We’ve found that patients often use the word experience in their comments: “I can’t believe how …
Patient perceptions of the hospital experience
I just got a taste of improved access, and I gotta tell you, it sapped my energy.
It reminds me of the old standup comic one-liner, “I just flew in from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired.”
Today was the department of medicine housestaff picnic (pretty much a guarantee to cause the weather to change from clear skies to rain), and so …
Want to know why residents don’t chose primary care? Read this.
Recently, Apple introduced its newest product, the Apple Watch. According to Businessweek, Apple spent years researching watches before deciding to build one. The company flew watch historians to California and they worked to understand how wristwatches have traditionally been used, and how a new “wrist computer” might work. They have hired leaders from diverse backgrounds — none of them techies — to lead these efforts.
It struck me that health care could learn a lot …
What Apple can teach health care: Hire unorthodox applicants
Recently, I wrote about the importance (and difficulty) of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a resident. Now, I’d like focus more specifically on the toll that residency — and in general, a career in medicine — takes on a health care provider’s mind and soul.
As you may have heard, in August two young physicians decided to end their lives. No one …
Suicide puts the medical profession in a difficult position
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
