Fibromyalgia Allergy List Crashes EMR at Local Hospital
Arlington, VA - Officials at Saint Vincent Hospital are searching for answers after a fibromyalgia patient with 57 allergies crashed their electronic medical record less than two hours after going live. "We were not prepared for the destructive forces fibro[myalgia] had to our IT infrastructure," said CEO Lance Bestow. "We spent eighty million dollars and hired fourteen consulting firms and it still found a way to ruin our day."Pharmacist Jim Detter was working data entry duty when the malicious fibromyalgia attack occurred. "Everything was fine at first. Then I hit a string of allergies to ca...
Source: The Happy Hospitalist - August 26, 2014 Category: Internists and Doctors of Medicine Authors: Tamer Mahrous Source Type: blogs
What to do about my boring blog?
My blog has devolved into something just plain boring, for lack of a better word. I will say I do not write for volume, I do not write for search engines or to build twitter followers or anything like that. I blog because it helps me cope with my devolving health. I do try to primarily write about breast cancer and related issues.But my life has not been about breast cancer recently. Which is a good thing. I do not focus my life on breast cancer now. My life focuses on work, getting ready for craft fairs this fall, and coping with my back and RA issues as well as fibromyalgia pain.I have also upped my volunteer work to a l...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - August 15, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: blogging boring breast cancer Source Type: blogs
Should we take their word for it? Patient-reported vs observed functional outcomes
Pain is a subjective experience. There’s no direct means to measure what it is like to be in pain. Disability, or the impact of pain on what we do in daily life is, on the other hand, able to be observed as well as reported on by people with pain. A question that has always fascinated me is the relationship between what an individual says they can or can’t do, versus what they can be observed to do.
One of the more common ways to determine disability by observation is the “functional capacity evaluation” – and readers of my blog will know that I’m not especially fond of them when they...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 10, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: Assessment Coping strategies Groupwork Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Pain conditions Professional topics Chronic pain Clinical reasoning function pain management Research Source Type: blogs
Pacing – Activity management concepts (a longer than usual post)
This study used actigraphy to monitor movements, and correlated this data with self-reported pain and fatigue. This study found that “high pacers” had more severe, escalating symptoms, and activity pacing was related to lower physical activity. Karsdorp & Vlaeyen (2009) found that activity avoidance but not activity pacing was associated with disability, and challenged the notion that pacing as an intervention is essential in pain management. van Huet, Innes, & Whiteford (2009) on the other hand, found that “graduates” from a pain management programme continued to use pacing strategies...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 3, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: 'Pacing' or Quota Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Pain conditions Research activity disability pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Talking and working out
Yesterday afternoon at the gym, I got to talking to two other women (this is a common occurrence to stop and chat) on the topic of getting into shape/staying in shape while dealing with ailments. One woman is just done with chemotherapy again for chronic recurrent ovarian cancer and is new to the gym. The other woman has osteoarthritis among other problems and has belonged for five years or so.The woman with ovarian is trying to get back in shape so she can go on a three week vacation to Turkey and Spain. She said it is quite difficult quite understandably to get some muscle tone again. I shared that I had been diagnosed w...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - July 29, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: friends gym sharing Source Type: blogs
Medical guidelines discovered
Yesterday, in my usual scouring of the internet for the magic cure for all my ailments, I found an article about variability in cancer treatment and compliance with guidelines. Its an interesting read and how to make sure you are getting the right treatment with second opinions, good insurance coverage (plan ahead), yada yada yada.And then I asked myself, what guidelines? I have always assumed that some little group of doctors got together and over a few beers put together their guidelines for treatment for each ailment. Little did I know that NCIC provides guidelines for treatment of all cancers. Some of them are even ava...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - July 25, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: discovery guidelines reading treatment options Source Type: blogs
An apology to the Australasian Faculty of Musculoskeletal Medicine
Some months ago I wrote a blog post about fibromyalgia, and mentioned that a group of clinicians seem to believe that psychosocial issues are not important when nociception can be abolished. A commentator took issue with my comment, and I very quickly amended the post. You can read the amended version here.
I also offered an invitation to the people who were offended by my statement that : if you’re able to demonstrate HOW you integrate biopsychosocial approaches in your practice, I’ll publish it.
Today, however, I found out that the AFMM has written to the University and wishes me to be censured, and that I s...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - July 9, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: News Professional topics AFMM apology Australasian Faculty of Musculoskeletal Medicine biopsychosocial dialogue discussion Source Type: blogs
Fatigue, needing sleep, being tired
I drag my butt out of bed these days as opposed to jumping out of bed. It is harder and harder to get up in the morning. I have never been a fan of snooze alarms but my husband introduced them into my life when we got married. Apparently now I need a snooze alarm. As I slept through the first four alarms this morning.There is a difference between fatigue, needing sleep and being tired. To me the differences are:Being tired means you need to rest to recover from exertionFatigue means chronically being tiredNeeding sleep means needing sleepI blame it on fibromyalgia predominantly. It causes fatigue. I get sleep and then I am...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - July 8, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: fatigue healthiness sleep tired Source Type: blogs
Gaps, and answering gritty questions
Research journals are full of really interesting studies, but some of the studies I’ve been reading lately seem to lack something. While they’re interesting, they don’t seem to approach some of the gritty questions clinicians need answers to. There are enormous gaps in our understanding of processes of healthcare delivery.
I like to get practical when I want to ponder things. I’ll weed the garden, prune the roses, take some photographs, and recently I’ve even taken to getting out in the garage to carve and sand wood, rip pallets apart – and while I do, I let my mind wander over things th...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - June 23, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Research biopsychosocial Source Type: blogs
I don't feel your pain - Ideas - The Boston Globe
IF YOU STOPPED the average person in an emergency room and asked why she's there—not just her guess at the problem, but what really motivated her to show up—the number one answer would be "pain."
For all that modern medicine has learned about disease and treatment, it's alleviating pain that still lies at the heart of the profession. And in recent years, the notion of treating "pain" as its own entity has been rising to the forefront in medicine. Pain management now has its own journals, conferences, clinics, and specialists, and pain relief is sometimes referred to as a human right. The In...
Source: Psychology of Pain - June 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Infographic on fibromyalgia
Source: MBA-Healthcare-Management.comFiled under: Pain conditions Tagged: fibromyalgia (Source: HealthSkills Weblog)
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - June 13, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: Pain conditions fibromyalgia Source Type: blogs
Study examines back pain and depression in seniors - Senior's Health - Press of Atlantic City
Researchers at the Univ-ersity of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are studying the most effective means of treating chronic low back pain and symptoms of depression - together - in those 60 or older.The ADAPT (Addressing Depression And Pain Together) study has been going on for four years. Seventy-five men and 123 women, ranging in age from 60 to 94, have taken part.About a third of seniors suffer from low back pain. Nearly 20 percent of Americans age 65 and older have clinically significant symptoms of depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.Up to 25 percent of seniors may suffer from both, said Dr....
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
A Five-Dimensional View of Pain | Pain Research Forum
Leaders of a major effort to systematically classify all common chronic pain conditions expect to have the first stage completed by mid-July 2014. The Pain Taxonomy, a project of the ACTTION public-private partnership, and the American Pain Society is one of two independent initiatives launched last spring to fill a widely perceived need for an updated evidence-based approach to improve diagnosis, treatment, and research of chronic pain (seePRF related news story). Key issues and decisions of the initial consensus meeting held in May 2013 are summed up in the March 2014 issue of The Journal of Pain. The paper also des...
Source: Psychology of Pain - April 8, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Non-drug approaches for people with fibromyalgia
No-one wants to be told their pain is “in your head”. But given our increasingly sophisticated understanding of pain neurobiology, there’s plenty of reason to agree that thinking, feeling and doing things differently makes life far more rewarding and rich than feeling helpless, fatigued and sore. Some proponents of purely biomedical interventions, notably musculoskeletal physicians, argue that if only the “source of the nociception” was found, the nerve “zapped” or anaesthetised, then all this psychosocial claptrap could be safely ignored. I think this belief shows ignorance and pe...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 23, 2014 Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: adiemusfree Tags: Coping strategies Pain Pain conditions Research Therapeutic approaches biopsychosocial CBT Chronic pain Cognitive Behavioural Therapy fibromyalgia pain management Source Type: blogs
I bow to my teacher: Fuzi, a topical herb?
Founder’s note: This is a guest post by NCNM student Yedidya Tabanpour, who writes quite glibly aboutvarious topics at his blog, and can also be found on Twitter. Comments are appreciated on guest posts!
Initial Exposure
Each moment signifies an encounter or lack there of that spirals into pinnacles of movement. And, every movement a person makes is part of a larger healing transformation. Whether an encounter feels like smooth sailing or just back breaking labor, pay no heed. The real significance is the deeper eruption of meaning that concludes the passing of said event and that which carries on to the next pinna...
Source: Deepest Health: Exploring Classical Chinese Medicine - March 21, 2014 Category: Alternative Medicine Practitioners Authors: Guest Author Tags: Acupuncture, Herbs & Other modalities Source Type: blogs
