I’m currently having a chance to do one of my least favorite things: be a patient. And the whole time, I’m missing no opportunity to declare what a bad patient I am. “I’m sorry I’m such a bad patient,” I said to the phlebotomist when I winced as she drew my blood. “I know I’m a bad patient,” I said to the x-ray technician who re-positioned my fractured arm. “We …
Is a good patient simply one who never complains or disagrees?
If you’re like many of us, the minute you or someone you care about is diagnosed with something, you go online to do research. You may even reach out to your Facebook friends. You’re far less likely to think, “Hey! Now that I have cancer/diabetes/MS, I better get a Twitter account!” If you can’t understand what people get out of Twitter, this post is for you.
Reason #1. Real-time conversations with people who’ve been there. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with cancer, …
Twitter is a valuable health resource for patients
The growth in internet and social media networking has introduced a new era in healthcare.
This growth in mobile health, or “mHealth”, will have a number of implications, which can be broadly defined as a new opportunity for health professionals to explore, listen and engage with both patients and colleagues.
In order to maximize the advantage of connected care solutions, we must first identify how advances in social media and mobile technologies …
The online presence of health information empowers patients
A friend recently told me his daughter has been accepted into medical school with hopes of becoming a pediatrician. Along with this accomplishment will come $250,000.00 in debt.
I could not help but think of how her educational experience and future practice model will be so different from those who hold leadership positions in medicine today. Tablet computers will replace books and she will live in a 24/7 wired world.
I came …
One simple question that is the essence of medicine
There are some patients we doctors never forget. They linger in our memories for various reasons. Often, it is their serious or unusual medical condition that stays with us. On other occasions, it is a zany or unique personality that we recall, even years later. Rarely, when the doctor-patient relationship becomes injured, then the patient may become unforgettable.
I remember a particular patient from 20 years ago for a very different …
Patients are our best teachers
Recently I was asked, “How can I improve my Press Ganey scores?” Presently this question applies mostly to hospitals as CMS is requiring hospitals to use the HCAHPS as a part of their quality reporting. Press Ganey can manage the HCAHPS for hospitals. Few physicians or physician groups presently survey patients for satisfaction; they should begin thinking about doing so in the near future as it seems likely that CMS …
Tips to improve your patient satisfaction scores
As a patient who was asked to speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2012 conference, I felt a bit covert. I wasn’t in a “backless gown,” rolling my IV pole down the hall of some hospital’s cardiac care unit. I wore an official lanyard and badge and mixed among health care journalists, yet I felt more like a dugout mom than savvy reporter.
My goal was to present the …
Health care journalists have tendencies similar to those of doctors
Facebook recently announced on Good Morning America that users in the U.S. and the U.K. can enroll as organ donors through links to official registries, making it easier for people who want to donate their organs to sign up. They’re working with Donate Life America, a nonprofit alliance of national organizations and state teams across the United States committed to increasing organ, eye and tissue donation.
But deciding to become an …
Becoming an organ donor requires more thought than a Facebook click
Nothing will force you to live life on your own terms faster than almost losing it.
In 2008, I was on fire. My husband and I had just moved, bought a house, adopted a dog – and I started my own consulting business while continuing to write and act in my spare time. Life was crazy because I was trying to live all of my dreams – at the same time.
While …
Adaptation can be painful, but it can also be a gift
Shortness of breath. I felt it for the first time while running on June 21st, 2011. I had just been rejected from my first choice medical school a few days prior – post-interview, the worst. I took it as a personal affront. They didn’t like me, my personality. I wondered how I had come off – fake, phony, artificially enthusiastic maybe. Maybe they didn’t think I was up to their …
Doctors need to understand what it means to be a patient
Can you say “reactance”? Don’t feel bad, I wasn’t familiar with the term either until recently. But as you will see, anyone that has ever been a patient will catch on pretty quickly as to what reactance is and how it works.
Reactance is how we respond to something that threatens to limit or eliminate our behavioral freedom. I recently experienced reactance in the course of “prepping” for a colonoscopy. The …
Minimize reactance in your health organization
Shannon Brownlee’s recent post, “Don’t discard shared decision making on the basis of PSA testing,” couldn’t ring more true. The crux of shared decision making is that the patient must decide, with his or her physician, which tests or procedures make sense, given the various risks, tradeoffs and outcomes. Discarding the construct on the basis of one test (PSA testing) is not only poor form in that it is a …
To test or not to test? Include the patient first
Ours is a provider-oriented system. Doctors like me and (former) hospital executives like me hate to admit it but it is true. Consumerism will slowly but surely drive it toward being a patient-oriented service model. What do patients and their families want from the health care delivery team? First and foremost is respect followed by service given in a high quality, very safe manner. Patients expect that the information gap …
What do patients want from the health care delivery team?
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s hard to believe that nearly 1.5 years ago have elapsed since my first-year orientation to medical school. Much of it seemed protocol with session after session on rules and regulations, but I vividly remember the few hours spent outlining standardized patient encounters and how my assessments over the next four years would be based on my interactions with a complete stranger. As alien as that idea sounded to me, …
Speak to a patient as though you were speaking to your grandparents
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
-William Shakespeare, Richard II
A friend recently asked me a simple question: Why do we have to wait so long for doctors and not for other professionals, like lawyers, accountants, or dentists? And what can we do about it?
A study by Press Ganey showed that the average time patients spend waiting to see their health provider is 24 minutes. The research was done …
Long waits at the doctor’s office disrespect patients
My husband and I have been self-employed for many years, and though our income is quite limited, we have always been careful with our finances, have always managed to live within our means, and have always paid our bills without assistance. We had private health insurance coverage and saw premium increases each year. Then to avoid further increases, coverage of office visits outside of deductible was dropped, and our deductible was raised to $4500. Finally, …
Asking about price is an essential part of a patient’s responsibility
Consider this scenario.
Joan, age 75, living in Ft. Lauderdale, was diagnosed with Stage IV Ovarian Cancer. Joan’s daughter, Beth, who lives in Kansas, contacts Maxine, a private patient advocate and RN who works in Ft. Lauderdale, to help her mother. Joan, Beth and Maxine have extensive conversations about the care Joan will need. The decision is made that Joan will need surgery and chemo. Maxine is hired to oversee the …
Patient advocates need to manage expectations
I was working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) the other day and as I counted, I found that more than half of the patients there, for lack of a better term, brought the condition upon themselves.
I sound harsh, but there was no better way to put it. I was taking care of Mrs. B, a 60-year-old lady with COPD who called EMS for shortness of breath. As EMS readied …
Heroic measures cannot cure how people want to live their lives
The following column was published on April 1, 2012 in USA Today.
I recently saw a middle-age man in my primary care clinic who asked whether he should continue his cholesterol medication. He was reacting to new Food and Drug Administration warnings on statins, a class of drugs taken by more than 20 million Americans to lower their cholesterol. Though generally safe, …
Many medical decisions require shared decision making
I am on my last rotation for medical school. It is a “rural selective”, which is a required elective at a rural or underserved location. I am fulfilling it at a local community health center in the women’s health department. Fun!
I am taking part in a day long orientation today. In one of the presentations, the speaker had a point on one of the slides about mandatory reporting, and included …
Should every case of domestic violence be reported?
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
