by Toni Bigby
Lately there has been a lot of conversation around patient empowerment – an ambiguous term, but one that is fodder for many conversations across the health care industry. Patient empowerment – to put it simply – is about providing the necessary tools and information to a patient so that he or she can take a more active and involved position in his or her health …
Do patients want to be empowered or managed?
I am teaching a new course entitled “Turning your Clinical Cases into Scholarly Work.”
I hope to draw on my own experiences through the years mentoring students and residents in writing up several clinical cases, but also in making diagnoses. In preparing for this course, I have also learned quite a bit about the controversy surrounding case reports and the challenges that they face in today’s healthcare system.
Unfortunately, case reports have …
Case reports continue to be an important part of journal publication
I understand the frustration and anger in CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen’s new book, The Empowered Patient. I agree that all of the horrible patient stories should have never occurred. As a practicing primary care doctor who has witnessed near misses and bad medical outcomes affect family members, I too wrote a book encouraging patients to be informed and engaged about their care.
The problem is that The Empowered …
Is The Empowered Patient too adversarial?
More Americans are overweight and out of shape than ever before. Their sedentary, high-calorie lifestyles are causing an epidemic of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and degenerative arthritis among other preventable conditions. If those aren’t bad enough, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle also raise the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, and other common forms of cancer.
Doctors all across the nation are struggling to treat these lifestyle-induced conditions with …
Coaches can help with lifestyle goals in a way that doctors cannot
Well, it happened again. Recently, I was somewhere over Saskatchewan, returning from a lovely Mediterranean cruise, in that uncomfortable semi-conscious state that passes for sleep when you’re flying coach, when the airplane’s PA system rang out:
“If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!”
If you’re old enough to remember the show “To Tell the Truth,” you know what happened next. In the show, four B-list celebrity …
If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!
by Winston F. Mitchell
I’m a 53 year-old male with no history of hypertension, no cholesterol problems and glucose count normal.
I was overweight but still in great physical shape. But over a period of weeks, walking to work, I started experiencing a shortness of breath. Finally I went to my doctor, he informed me he was going to admit me to the hospital immediately because a …
10 things you need to know before surgery and during the hospital stay
Oncology is the area where the health care cost conundrum is coming into sharpest focus. Theoretically, who wouldn’t spend whatever it takes to cure a life-threatening disease? And yet practically the costs of new treatments are so high, and the improvements usually modest enough, that when it comes right down to it costs are becoming a real issue for patients and doctors.
An interesting article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology …
Comparative effectiveness research needs to be taught to doctors and patients
Doctors: if you’re sick, don’t go to work.
The stereotype of doctors is that they go to work, despite whatever symptoms ail them. Calling in sick places strain on colleagues. Especially in residency, where team members are expected to pick up the slack.
In a recent column, the New York Times’ Pauline Chen discusses the image of self-sacrifice that a sick doctor going to work portrays:
Hacking, febrile or racked with the …
Sick doctors who work are doing more harm to their patients than good
by Daphne Swancutt
Call it a silly, useless curse. I get sucked in to trying to find patterns and connections anywhere I can. Most of them are silly and useless. Occasionally I find ones that actually make some sense, if only to me.
As a healthcare marketer who also geeks out on reform, genetics and the e-patient movement, I can’t help but try to wrap healthcare up into …
How healthcare marketers can connect with patients
Patients want a quick fix. Society wants patients to have a quick fix, so that they can quickly return to their usual performance at work and home.
Patients still have shame about seeking help from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. So they ask help for their depression from their primary care physician. The PCP feels an emotional pressure to provide the quick fix in that 15-minute appointment – the …
How an antidepressant can hurt your patient
An excerpt from Treat Me, Not My Age: A Doctor’s Guide to Getting the Best Care as You or a Loved One Gets Older.
The bathroom: This is the most dangerous place in the home, what with hard surfaces, water that makes floors slippery, nothing but your birthday suit between you and the tile and tub, and, to top it all off, poor access to a telephone should …
Bathroom, lighting and flooring modifications that can save your life
As a medical provider, while seeing a husband and wife, or a couple, regardless of gender, one comes across several situations that may be considered difficult to handle and that require a good deal of tact and confidentiality.
This is the case with seeing a husband and wife or (couple), together, for an examination. Ultimately, it depends on the rapport that the couple shares. If they …
A physician seeing the husband and wife together
In the months since the Haitian earthquake, psychologists from around the world have been traveling to the island, hoping to help a population in shock and at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Many are veterans of crises such as Hurricane Katrina, and have extensive experience responding to disasters.
But Dr. Guerda Nicolas, a Haitian-born researcher who has conducted landmark studies examining how Haitians experience depression and cope with disasters, has a …
Post traumatic stress disorder after the Haitian earthquake
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It’s a simple question, but it has stirred some controversy. It’s the word “friendly.”
Colleague and fellow passionate advocate Bart Windrum got (as my mother would say) his blood in a bubble after reading an article about engaging a patient advocate to help you navigate your healthcare, published in a Tampa newspaper.
In a list of tips about how to advocate for someone else, one tip said, “In hospitals ask, …
How to command respect in any medical setting
In downtown Los Angeles recently, two very different celebrations went on within walking distance of each other.
On West Temple Street, at the beautiful and contemporary Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels—a structure with no right angles in its adobe-colored walls—Catholic Mass was offered throughout the morning, in both English and Spanish. Five blocks south, at the stunningly refurbished Millennium Biltmore Hotel on Grand Avenue, the Council for Secular Humanism, …
Religious coping in dying patients
We often speak of the importance of continuity of care, but there is confusion about what this really means.
When I first joined our small clinic twenty-five years ago, continuity was the reason every medical group in the five town area had its own night-call roster. This way, patients who called after hours could reach a doctor from their own doctor’s office. Even if the covering physician didn’t know the patient, …
Continuity of care starts with caring
by June Parker Beck
At age 73 I have definitely seen the evolution of the whole “doctor” experience, from Ob/Gyn, to pediatrician (have 5 children) to specialist, to internist.
I’ve learned to accept the fact that in this high tech age, we aren’t going to be chatting with our doctor about the grade school bake sale. The biggest lesson learned, however, was that if you are treated …
Doctors need to be aware of their office staff behavior
New concepts need gimmicks. Proven concepts do not.
The phenomenon of using the internet to gather and share health information is now mainstream. It’s time to change how we talk about it, revising and maybe even retiring certain terms.
Some history to build our case:
In 1998, only about one-third of American adults had access to the internet. Harris Interactive published pioneering research about how internet users gather health information online, dubbing these …
Using the internet for health information is not the exception
by Diana E. Lee
Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Percy Harvin has been struggling with chronic migraines.
If you don’t follow football you may not have heard of him. But let me assure you he is a high profile player in the National Football League and an important component of the Minnesota Vikings’ offense. Harvin has dealt with migraines since childhood (like me), but almost …
How Percy Harvin struggles with chronic migraines
by Thomas Goetz
Enough about patients: What is a doctor to do?
In the past few months, since The Decision Tree book came out, I’ve had the privilege to talk with many doctors about the opportunity and challenge of engaging patients in their own health. Some physicians, not surprisingly, have been suspicious, and even hostile to the idea that patients have a …
How can doctors successfully engage their patients?
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