Recently I had the privilege of travelling to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the inaugural BC Forum of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research. We had a wonderful host in the Department of Global Health of Simon Fraser University (and especially from Drs. Craig Jones & Vic Neufield). It was a challenging and pivotal conference for me.
That is not what I want to share now. The conference started with …
A few months ago, I came out with a post on why I love my own doctor. Today I want to celebrate my patients, both past and present. For me, without the experience I have had over the past 14 years, I would not have enjoyed medicine quite as much as I do.
What I like the most about medicine is the ability to interact with people. That’s what clinical medicine is all …
8 reasons why I love my patients
If you have a brain and work in healthcare, you know chances are good that David Houle and Jonathan Fleece’s prediction that “one third of hospitals will close by 2020” is on the money. Until a recent marriage and move took me to St. Louis, my job was to sell a Texas hospital system’s plans for the future to major donors; and throughout my five-year tenure, the looming and pervasive …
My philanthropic advice to America’s healthcare supporters
The Internet beta 0.5 version was nothing like it is today. Back in the ’80s and the early ’90s the most common way to access the outside world was to use a phone modem to dial the number of a remote computer. These primitive servers usually ran DOS based software called a Bulletin Board System (BBS) which allowed users to post messages to each other. For the most part, these …
Why Facebook should be a template for electronic medical records
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
In an effort to recognize April as Earth Month, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is taking action to help hospitals across the country green their operating rooms with a white paper by the ASA Task Force on Environmental Sustainability.
Physicians such as anesthesiologists are responsible for the …
In recent years, childhood overweight and obesity statistics have received a good deal of media attention, but this has done little to slow their rise. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that nearly 1 in 5 children aged 2-19 are obese. Even more concerning, since 1980 obesity rates have tripled in the 6-11 and 12-19 age groups.
Our …
Bearing the burden of the uphill battle against childhood obesity
I recently worked a shift at one of the free, student run clinics here in Palo Alto. Compared to a previous shift a while back, today was quite calm with a manageable flow of patients. In fact, the number of volunteer hands far outnumbered the number of patients so I wondered if my services were even necessary.
Should I duck out early to go work on one of the four problem …
Each moment with a patient is a privilege
Have you ever owned a dog? If so, did you ever take him to the vet? I’m sure that even if you don’t own a pet, you understand the gist of the question, but now I’d like to ask it again in a different way. Before taking your animal to the doggie doctor, do you ask the little guy which vet he wants to see, or what treatment he wants …
Why American health care is inching closer to veterinary clinic status
An excerpt from The Take-Charge Patient: How You Can Get The Best Medical Care (Lemon Grove Press) which will be released May 15, 2012.
Your Relationship with Your Doctor
“A good relationship with your physician can lead to better medical care.”
-Zouhdi A. Hajjaj, MD, internal Medicine, Yarmouthport, MA
Your relationship with your doctor is an important one that can last for many years. It is a partnership. You and your doctor collaborate to maintain your …
Communicate and strengthen your relationship with your doctor
In my first week of the 3rd year surgery clerkship, I was introduced to some of the “Rules of Surgery.” For example, “All bleeding stops eventually,” or, “Everyone doesn’t need to die with an incision,” and even “The enemy of good is better.”
Boarded for this particular afternoon was a pancreaticoduodenectomy (the Whipple procedure), which for students is known to be a must-see operation if given the opportunity. However, the night …
Why do bad things happen to good people?
“Wait, you said you’re a medical student?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I will be seeing a real doctor though, right?”
“Yes, of course!” I smiled, then attempted to defuse his frustration with a quip about getting two opinions for the price of one.
He didn’t laugh, understandably. He was only 25, built like a linebacker, draped in a backwards hospital gown that exposed his unfamiliarity with this environment, among other things. Yet he was here …
The real doctors will see you in the morning
I am a physician who was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent laryngectomy four years ago. Prior to being diagnosed and treated for cancer I did not welcome or encourage my patients’ participation in their own care. Admittedly, there were instances when such input was helpful, but more often I regarded patients with data based on information obtained from the Web as a challenge to my expertise and authority. …
I changed my perspective about patient participation in their care
“A 41 year-old woman with no documented medical history or family history of disease presents to you complaining of occasional chest pains on exertion. How many would order a stress test to rule-out cardiovascular disease?” asks Dr. Gary Bloch, to a captivated audience of resident physicians currently in training at an academic learning day – a few hands go up.
“Now how about if she were a smoker or had high …
Why doctors should screen for poverty
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By 2015, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the U.S. health care system will be short approximately 30,000 primary care doctors. Yet, everything we read says that primary care physicians are the linchpins of the new (really rediscovered) coordinated care models being talked about by health care policy cognoscenti. What gives?
Since the mid-1990s the number of medical students pursuing a career in primary care has been on a steady, sinking decline, …
Skills primary care doctors of the future will need
Back in 2000, a group of experts convened by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) reported that, although substantial medical error and injury was occurring in the ambulatory setting, very little research had been done to understand the reasons why.
To address what they recognized as a serious issue, this expert panel made 11 specific recommendations that were intended to stimulate research in this area.
Fast forward to the present …
Improving patient safety in ambulatory care
The mother of the dead baby sat in her husband’s arms and simply asked “why?” over and over through the Vietnamese interpreter. I had no way to answer the question. I didn’t know why. There was nothing to point to. No defect in the child or mother or the actions taken in L&D.
All I could do was say “I am so sorry” … for your baby, for you … for …
The double tragedy of medicine’s battlefield mentality
Emergency, as per the all-knowing Webster, is defined as an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action. Furthermore, an emergency is also defined as an urgent need for assistance or relief.
These definitions sound pretty spot-on, right? When thinking about emergency room settings, even, one can easily correlate the words of Webster to what one would …
The obviousness of long waiting times in the emergency department
My primary care physician, the last time I was in for a checkup, had not adopted ePrescribing or started using an electronic health record (EHR). My understanding is that the medical group to which he belongs had not rolled out these capabilities to him yet but was planning to do so. Hopefully, this summer when I see him again he will be plugged into the electronic health record that the …
How doctors should adopt new technology
If Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel gets his wish, tomorrow’s physicians won’t deserve to be paid as well as physicians today because they won’t be as well trained.
Dr. Emanuel, a brother of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a chief apologist for the Affordable Care Act, is the lead author of a startling opinion column in the March 21 Journal of the American Medical Association. He argues that there is “substantial waste” in …
Reducing training will diminish the status of physicians
Using data from Medicare and private insurers, analysts at the RAND Corporation found that the rate of involvement of anesthesiologists for upper GI endoscopy and colonoscopy in low-risk patients had risen steadily over the last few years and is estimated to add $1.1 billion in what may be unnecessary health care costs. There was wide regional variation in the use of anesthesiologists which suggests that some or most of the …
Why more colonoscopies need anesthesiologists
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