by Carolyn Savage
Our names will be forever connected with one of the most significant medical errors ever made inside a fertility clinic.
In February 2009, through a process referred to as a frozen embryo transfer, another couple’s embryos were mistakenly transferred into my body. Eight months later, I gave birth to a baby boy who we relinquished to his genetic parents a few minutes after …
Medical error in a fertility clinic
by Rima Rudd, ScD
We take the written word for granted.
Signs and billboards are everywhere – offering directional information, alerts, warnings, and advertisements. Streets, public squares, buildings, agencies, and institutions are numbered and named. We are surrounded by the written word in public locations and within public and private institutions. Individual entrances and even elevators in some large buildings carry names. The lobby, the inside hallways, …
Literacy related difficulties in health settings and the written word
Friday in my office is like happy hour for the oldest of the old.
They come. 90, 95, 100. Always on Fridays. Some come in wheel chairs. Others walking. Some alone. Others with family. 5,6, 7 sometimes even more in just one short morning. And we talk about life, about their children, about growing old. I apologize that at that age I really have little to offer. After all, they know …
Entering the golden age of hospice care
Our colleague Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project has done much research about trends in mobile, particularly about health.
In contrast, Meeker focuses on overall big trends. She sees aspects I’ve never noticed, like what-all constitutes mobile: when I hear the term, I think handheld phones (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry), but she makes the case that mobile web access (and other wireless) is much more than phones.
As we …
How the mobile internet can transform healthcare
Last weekend I had the privilege of supervising University of Miami Miller School of Medicine students at a free public health screening in Pompano Beach, Florida. The screening was sponsored by the medical school, with the assistance of community leaders, and held in a local public school. The program organization, recruitment of student and faculty volunteers and management of the program was undertaken and implemented by the students. It is …
Free health screening: A service to our community’s health
by Kate Gray
I call William my spirited child. Like many 3 year-olds, he loves to run and jump, and does it without the slightest sense of fear. His boundless energy has always been one of his most endearing features, but in a split second, it also almost took him from us forever.
A few days before Christmas, my husband Mark and I had some last minute holiday …
Forever grateful to the doctors and nurses who saved my son
It’s not easy being a parent of teens these days. Previously rational children transform into moody, unreasonable creatures whose need to shock is only surpassed by their efforts to fit in.
Add a measure of impulsiveness and experimentalism, and it’s no wonder risky behavior skyrockets during these years. What a parent can do is to keep the lines of communication open, stay informed of the health dangers of some of the …
10 health dangers that your teen may face
The following op-ed was published on February 2, 2011 in USA Today.
Last fall, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital was shot by the distraught son of a patient for whom he was caring. The man later killed his mother, then himself. A week earlier, a patient in a Long Island, N.Y., hospital beat his nurse with a leg from a broken chair, causing serious injuries. The following month, a psychiatric …
Understanding patient violence against health care workers
Clinician. Diagnostician. Prognostician. Healer.
A physician has many jobs to perform, all critical to the appropriate management of what ails our patients. Without astute physical exam skills or a keen ability to sort through a medical history to uncover salient data, the physician is no better at diagnosing a patient than a Google search (and we’re quite a lot better, in case anyone was wondering). Without a proper understanding of physiology …
Viewing physicians source of care, rather than a barrier to care
When I had a heart attack two years ago, I was taken immediately from the E.R. to the O.R. for emergency treatment, including cardiac catheterization and a stainless steel stent implanted in a major coronary artery that was 99% blocked. But, overwhelmed and terrified, I knew nothing about what was about to happen, even though I have a vague memory of the cardiologist explaining something to me before I was whisked …
Patients are not to blame for the miscommunication about cardiac stents
Lack of sexual interest is the most common sexual complaint in women.
The latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), which defines psychiatric disorders, defines Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) as ‘‘persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity’’ that causes ‘‘marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.’’ Epidemiologic surveys have suggested that from 25 to 50 percent of women report prolonged periods …
Lack of sexual interest is the most common sexual complaint in women
by Jerry Levin
For all of us — young, old, and those in the middle — life is simply an interlude between doctors’ visits. This perspective, while obvious, perennially stays beneath our consciousness since we are consumed by the daily pursuit of personal identity as if our mind-body-and-spirit were to function without incident and without end. More powerfully of late is the recognition that the explosive neglect of mental …
Patients are closing the health gap online
On the subject of shopping for and preparing nutritious meals, one piece of advice that I like to share is that it’s best to stick to the outer walls of the supermarket and avoid the center. So with only a few exceptions, like flour, oil and beans, that’s exactly how I shop. What does it mean to shop at the edges of the supermarket? Let me show you what I …
Supermarket tips for preparing nutritious meals
ADVERTISEMENT
Last year it was the “Save the Boobs” video. This year it’s the “I (Heart)Boobies” bracelets.
Some people were very offended by the video’s slow-motion close-ups that were more reminiscent of a beer commercial. Now, some schools are banning kids from wearing the bracelets. And in a recent post on Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory made the eloquent case that we’re more than the sum of our body parts, and recounted her mom’s battle with metastasized lung cancer.
I agree …
Save the Boobs, and whether humor has a role in breast cancer
As far as my chemo nurse Olga (not her real name) is concerned, I can do nothing right.
She scolded me for sending an e-mail when she thought I should have called and vice versa. She scolded me for going home before my next appointment was scheduled. She scolded me for asking to speak to her personally instead of whichever nurse was available. She scolded me for calling my oncologist directly. …
Sharing information about your health with specialists is difficult
Few patients enter our health care system prepared for the unexpected and embarrassing circumstances that can routinely happen.
Most can accept it when we’re treated with modesty and respect. But not many are prepared for those times when you might be unnecessarily exposed or treated rudely. The possibilities for embarrassment are endless and it is usually unexpected. When avoidable incidents do happen, most patients are not prepared to speak up. Many …
When your privacy is violated in the doctor’s office
Recently, a female patient saw me in the office for the first time to discuss her chronic digestive issues. Luckily for her, my recommendations did not include probing into her alimentary canal with the endoscopic serpents that we gastroenterologists rely upon.
As the visit concluded, she advised me that she intended to have a gastric bypass (GIB) procedure performed, and even used the medical term of bariatric surgery. I suppose that …
Gastric bypass is not a short cut to treat obesity
by Aditya Mattoo, MD
Not too long ago, a patient came to my clinic and said (I’m paraphrasing of course), “I never cared for alcohol, doctor, so I haven’t had much to drink since my college days. Maybe champagne or wine on the rare special occasion, but I keep hearing about how wine is good for your heart, so I am thinking I should start drinking …
Is alcohol good for me? The data behind drinking and your heart
by Zakari Tata, MD
Informed consent has continued to generate a lot of interest in medicine worldwide.
The reason is because patients in medicine and subjects in clinical trials need protection from the multitude of injuries and harms that have been caused by intentional or accidental actions. The controversies generated by various lapses of informed consent, in my opinion, have not been addressed and more safeguards need to be put in place …
A balanced approach to informed consent
One of the stories circulating regarding the demonstrations in Wisconsin is the authenticity of the doctor work notes.
Squarely in the cross-hairs are physicians from the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Family Medicine.
According to this excellent piece in The Atlantic by physician-writer Ford Vox,
In videos breathlessly presented throughout the conservative mediasphere this weekend, doctor after doctor is videotaped writing patently fraudulent sick notes so that the protesting teachers (whose contracts …
Physicians disgrace the University of Wisconsin with fake doctor notes
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
