Patients and caregivers writing on KevinMD about illness and the health care system from the other side of the exam table: navigating care, the doctor-patient relationship, being heard, cost, and what patients want physicians to understand. Physicians who have become patients write here too. For the record of what pain patients and physicians have said to each other about opioids since 2007, with patient authors cited at the same weight as physicians, see Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words. For what patients pay and who is left out when physicians leave insurance, see Direct primary care: what physicians say, in their own words. For what patients, families, and physicians have said about dying, hospice, and the decisions families face, see End of life: what physicians say, in their own words. For what physicians and family caregivers have said about growing old, dementia, nursing homes, and caring for aging parents, see Aging and dementia: what physicians say, in their own words.
Does it really matter how many ribs Michelle Obama ate on her vacation? For too many conservatives, the answer seems to be yes, with pundits poking fun at the anti-obesity guru’s dinner choice. But conservatives need to give it a rest: many seem to prefer scoring easy points against the First Lady to arguing about the best way to attack the obesity epidemic — and some even claim that …
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Why obesity should concern conservatives
Sooner or later, it happens to every patient advocate or navigator who works with patients on the medical aspects of their care (as opposed to other forms of advocacy, like billing or legal advocates).
One of “our” patients — someone whose hand we have held, who we have protected from problems in the hospital, who depended on our advocacy expertise as a way to make the …
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It’s not an advocate’s job to save a patient’s life
The non-compliant patient who sues his physician for an adverse clinical outcome is a storied malpractice bogeyman. After failing to follow a screening regimen, show for appointments, undergo recommended tests, make health-related lifestyle changes, or take their medications, these patients (now plaintiffs) have the audacity to blame the doctors and nurses for not being adequately clear or assertive.
Are they real?
Yes and no. Not every “difficult” patient is a potential …
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Do non-compliant patients really sue their doctors?
Getting your infant, toddler, or even preschooler to sleep through the night is tricky at best.
If you are one of the lucky ones, you may have an “easy” sleeper. You know, the one that seems content after some rocking, singing, and nursing. Things just flow and voila, you actually have a baby that, “sleeps like a baby” so to speak.
However, for many of us, “sleep like a baby” is …
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Let go of guilt while trying to get your baby to sleep
It was a beautiful Monday morning in May. Yawning uncontrollably, I hopped into a Ford Hybrid with my attending and drove off to visit a patient who lived two hours away from our hospital. I woke up especially early that morning since we knew the commute would take many hours.
We drove past open fields and a few cows before pulling into a driveway of a lovely house with a cute …
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From the brink of hospice to awaiting a reading machine
by Larry Cohen
When Florida Governor Rick Scott recently signed legislation barring doctors from asking about gun safety practices in the homes of their child patients, it sounded the alarm that physicians’ roles in community prevention are chronically misunderstood. Rather than restricting doctors’ options for involvement in prevention, we should be supporting and expanding them.
Community prevention is the creation of physical and social environments that …
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Doctor support critical in the fight for community prevention
by Sara Billings, RN
I believe knowledge is power. There is no more complex topic in the healthcare debate than end-of-life care. I have been a Registered Nurse for thirty years. I deal with this every day. All of us will confront this issue eventually. When it’s your turn, I hope the medical profession will guide you to the best options for you and your family.
Often I see patients who have …
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Our health system defaults toward treatment rather than compassion
I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewis, for not making it to the hospital to see you yesterday.
Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I could never catch up. My wife was going downtown for work, and we had to get up early. While she prepared, I helped my two-year-old son get dressed. We walked my wife to the train, then waited for the nanny. She was running late: I …
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An apology to a terminal patient with colon cancer
Meet Elaine.
We lost touch for a while, but caught up with each other recently.
Like most girlfriends, we shared adventures of love, travel, and work. I told Elaine that I left assembly-line medicine. Now I host town hall meetings-inspiring citizens nationwide to design ideal clinics and hospitals.
Elaine shared: “If I’m kept waiting, I bill the doctor. At the twenty-minute mark, I politely tell …
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Patients who bill their doctor for being late
I bet you didn’t know that the war for independence is being fought on a daily basis throughout our glorious country. From the time we are born until the time we die, each of us strives to assert our independence. Once the toddler learns to run, he insists on running wherever he wants to. As he ages, we foster his need to be independent and teach him …
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When the parent becomes child and child becomes parent
Although Jack Kevorkian was only a few years older than I was, and we both practiced pathology in southern California for many of the same years, I never met Dr. Kevorkian.
I found him from a distance to be a deeply odd character, and a profoundly flawed messenger but with a profoundly correct message.
I can’t improve on the quick summary of Jack Kevorkian by an unnamed author that the New …
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Why Jack Kevorkian had a profoundly correct message
Brenda Bryant learned she had breast cancer while she was sitting alone in her car in the parking lot of her grandson’s day care center. It was early evening on a Friday two years ago, and her surgeon called to tell her the results of a biopsy. “He just gave me my results and that was it,” says Bryant, who lives in Northern Virginia. “It was like there was …
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Use the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Information Service
Everyone liked him. Though his later years (the only ones in which I knew him) took away his ability to do most things, and though he was in great pain every day, it was easy to see the mischief in his eyes. The subtle humor was still there, coming out of a man who was weak, in pain, dying.
She lived for him. She was always telling me of his pain, …
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Death is inevitable, but it is almost always seen as tragic
Members of the American public are frequently surveyed about their trust in various professionals. Doctors and nurses usually wind up near the top of the list, especially when compared to lawyers, hairdressers and politicians. Trust in professionals is important to us: they possess expertise we lack but need, to solve problems ranging from the serious (illness) to the relatively trivial (appearance).
How much professionals trust us seems irrelevant: our reciprocity is …
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Measuring physician trust in patients
by Diana E. Lee
Sports journalists recently discussed discussing Dwyane Wade’s migraines and his decision to try wearing goggles to deal with light sensitivity.
News outlets like ESPN proved once again they know how to treat migraine disease as a serious, burdensome medical issue in reporting on Wade’s health situation. But somehow at the eleventh hour the story got way more complicated and the NBA revealed they don’t …
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Dwyane Wade and the NBA’s insensitivity to his migraines
