Making health social: Friends and family as part of the health care team
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“We’ll stop by McDonald’s once I get out of the hospital,” Arturo told his brother. Arturo (not his real name), was 21 years old and had just been diagnosed with diabetes. He and his brother loved fast food, McDonald’s being one of their most frequent haunts. Unfortunately, this new diagnosis was likely to change that.
This was Arturo’s first health problem, ever. He had a few days of being extremely thirsty but needing to urinate every hour or two. Then, for about a day he couldn’t keep anything down. Vomiting, his belly aching, he came into the ER with his brother.
I admit...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - March 15, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: David Scales, MPhil, MD, PhD Tags: Behavioral Health Caregiving Health care Managing your health care Prevention Source Type: blogs
My mother isn ’t a drug-seeking patient. She’s in pain.
The patient, age forty-nine, complained of abdominal pain. She was taking both slow- and fast-acting oxycodone to manage the pain, and she also took antidepressants and a sleeping aid. She’d come to the hospital several times in the past year, always with the same complaint. This time, not feeling well enough to drive, she’d come by taxi. The veins in her arms were small, threadlike and collapsed, like those of a ninety-year-old or a recreational drug user.
Her medical file was huge, with reports from her primary-care physician, from local hospitals and the gastroenterology department of a highly regarded teach...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 15, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/christina-phillips" rel="tag" > Christina Phillips < /a > Tags: Patient Pain management Source Type: blogs
What the Oscars can teach us about patient safety
Recently, one of the biggest mistakes ever observed on live television occurred when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, presenters of the award, announced the wrong film as winner of the Academy Award for best picture. Not since Janet Jackson’s costume malfunction has, live television caused such uproar.
How could this have happened? How could it have been prevented? Moreover, what can this error teach us about how we care for patients?
A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner had handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope. Faye Dunaway, presenting the award with Mr. Beatty, reading part of the card erroneously annou...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 14, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/evan-m-benjamin" rel="tag" > Evan M. Benjamin, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital Primary care Source Type: blogs
The great unspoken secret
Sometimes it feels like the great unspoken secret between doctors and nurses. The words that we dare not utter to patients and families. Perhaps it is our hope that we’re wrong. Perhaps, we dread providing unwanted news. Perhaps, we don’t want to face reality or extinguish our patients’ hope.
As a daughter, I felt that sense of sadness and dread, waiting to hear the news that would not be told. It was September of 1989, I was only 20 years old and just beginning my first year of medical school. It was less than a week from my first medical school examination, when my mother developed intractable nausea ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 14, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/yvette-youssef" rel="tag" > Yvette Youssef, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital Hospitalist Source Type: blogs
Beyond Our Walls
Editor’s Note: This blog post complements a collection of articles in our March issue that explores physicians’ and trainees’ understanding of how social structures and structural competency influence health. Check back throughout the month for additional perspectives on this topic.
Within our hospitals and clinics, it is easy to focus on the crowds of patients, the remarkable new technology, and the numerous resources that have to come together to care for patients with increasingly complex health care needs. We assemble teams to manage the most challenging problems–the multisystem trauma patient, ...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - March 14, 2017 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: David P. Sklar, M.D. Tags: Featured From the Editor medical education patient care physician advocacy social determinants of health structural competency Source Type: blogs
The American Health Care Act (AHCA): Why It ’ s Not Going Away Anytime Soon and What You Need to Know
By PAUL KECKLEY
Last Monday, as promised, House Speaker Paul Ryan fulfilled his pledge to offer up the GOP’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
In reality, America’s Health Care Act (AHCA) is not a new plan. Rather, it’s an updated version of the “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015” that passed the 114th Congress October 23, 2015 before being vetoed by President Obama. Surrogates for this plan are quick to point out that their Repeal and Replace effort also encompasses administrative orders from HHS Secretary Tom Price, executive orders from President Trump and legisl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 13, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Minimally Invasive Surgery Congress 2017: A Quick Summary
Discussion also focused on using virtual reality and simulators to train increasing numbers of surgical trainees faster, better, and cheaper—with the issue brought sharply into focus in the context of the growing global shortage in the number of surgeons needed to perform even basic procedures.
Both cautious and enthusiastic outlooks of increased technology use in surgery were debated by participants—some advocated for a conservative balancing of costs to benefits in the short-term, others for embracing the digital revolution enthusiastically.
“Virtual surgeon” and popular futurist Shafi Ahmed perhaps put it best: ...
Source: Medgadget - March 13, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tom Peach Tags: Exclusive Source Type: blogs
Happy 12th birthday to the Health Business Blog
The Health Business Blog has turned 12 years old! Continuing a tradition I established with birthdays one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven I have picked out a favorite post from each month. Thanks for continuing to read the blog!
March 2016: Health Wonk Review -Tales of the Trump
My roundup of policy posts from the blogosphere took Trump seriously and literally.
April 2016: Listen app – ResApp diagnoses respiratory ailments
An Australian company developed a smartphone app to diagnose respiratory diseases by analyzing the sound signatures of coughs. I interviewed the CEO, Dr...
Source: Health Business Blog - March 13, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Announcements Blogs Source Type: blogs
Your First Colonoscopy! What to Expect
Whee! Time for a Tube Up Your Tuchus!image:wikimedia commonsBy Crabby McSlackerSo, some perspective here: for people with serious illnesses who've been through hardcore, painful, debilitating, invasive medical procedures? A colonoscopy is probably child's play. (Although let's be clear, that's just an expression. If your child actually plays this way? We need to talk).But for most people, there's at least a little trepidation. And for many, if statistics are to be believed, that fear is significant enough to skip the procedure entirely! Well sure, it could save your life and all, but really? Do you have to?There are actual...
Source: Cranky Fitness - March 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Crabby McSlacker Source Type: blogs
The secret horrors of sleep-deprived doctors
Recently, the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) made the reckless decision to increase work hours to 28-hour shifts for new doctors. Here are the catastrophic consequences of their decision. Here are actual quotes from physicians (de-identified with some patient details changed to protect confidentiality):
“I did my internship in internal medicine and residency in neurology before laws existed to regulate resident hours. My first two years were extremely brutal, working 110 to 120 hours/week, and up to 40 hours straight. I got to witness colleagues collapse unconscious in the hallway during r...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 12, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/pamela-wible" rel="tag" > Pamela Wible, MD < /a > Tags: Education Hospital Residency Source Type: blogs
Who if not me will make my patients whole?
Having graduated from medical school in 2008 and internal medicine residency in 2011, I am a physician-child of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) era. The belief that “health care is a human right” ran deep through my upbringing and life experiences, but training during a period of such intense debate over health care reform reinforced this ideal. My professional identity developed interwoven with a compelling national conversation about access and improvement. Though the ACA has much to debate in the details, the dialogue of my medical coming-of-age was rooted in the quest for quality, sustainability, and equity.
I work...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 12, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/rebecca-jaffe" rel="tag" > Rebecca Jaffe, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Health reform Source Type: blogs
Undoctored: Giving back control over individual health
The new Undoctored book is scheduled for release this coming May 9th, 2017, a book that shows how you can be freed from the bonds of a predatory, profit-seeking healthcare system. Here’s a bit more from the book, now available in pre-release.
Undoctored: An excerpt
Unquestionably, there are situations in which doctoring and the healthcare system are needed. If you are bleeding, injured, or struggling to breathe with pneumonia, some old-fashioned suturing, bone-setting, or antibiotics can still do the trick. Nobody around here is going to replace their own hip joint or treat a urinary tract infection with sal...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - March 12, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat-Free Lifestyle autoimmune diabetes gluten grains hypertension Inflammation metabolic undoctored Weight Loss wheat belly Source Type: blogs
How medical students can game Match Day
On March 17 at noon, about 18,000 medical students will open envelopes telling them where they will spend the next several years of their lives. It’s residency Match Day, and for many, that letter is one of the most important they will ever receive.
The process is supposed to be straightforward. Medical students, like me, submit applications to hospitals and health systems where they would like to work. Then, if they like what they read, residency committees invite us for interviews. In late February, both applicants and programs rank their preferences, and an algorithm matches us up in a way that most efficiently allo...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 11, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/kunal-sindhu" rel="tag" > Kunal Sindhu < /a > Tags: Education Medical school Residency Source Type: blogs
Whose Costs? Who Benefits? - A Close Reading of a Hospital System CEO's Prescription for Controlling Health Care Costs
The attempt to " repeal and replace " the Affordable Care Act has suddenly made health care dysfunction a hot topic in the US. For example, today, in my local paper, the Providence Journal, Dr Timothy J Bainbeau, the CEO of the Lifespan Health System, the biggest regional health systemweighed in on the problem of high and increasing health care costs. A close reading of his commentary suggests how the leadership of big US health care organizations needs to think about whether their actions have become more of the problem than a source of solutions.The CEO ' s Diagnosis and Prescription Dr Babineau beg...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Tags: CEO disease executive compensation market fundamentalism neoliberalism perverse incentives Source Type: blogs
