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What Makes A Great Oncologist?

I had a WOW experience yesterday when I accompanied my wife to interview a new doctor for her.   As some reader may know she is being seen by specialists at MD Anderson Medical Center in Houston for Stage IV lung cancer.   She has not had a local oncologist for the past 6 years…but she does now.   And we both love this guy!

You need to understand that I have been very underwhelmed by the local oncologists I had met up till now.   I am sure they were clinically proficient…but as a group not a one could muster a smile….or any sense of interest or curiosity in my wife’s medical condition.  I held out little hope that this new doctor would be any different.

After being ushered into the exam room, a Physician’s Assistant came into the room to get smart about my wife’s history and records (which she brought).   Three things surprised me about the PA.  1) She was incredibly thorough actually reading the radiology reports and reflecting with my wife on what she learned, 2) her empathy – as she read the reports she actually used terms like “bummer” when she read how my wife developed pneumonia during her treatment, and 3) she faithfully summarized the results of her review to the doctor before he came in.  In other words – the PA listened and heard what my wife shared with her!

Now enters the doctor.   He has a warm smile on his face while he extends a hand to my wife and me.  He says just enough for us to know that he has talked to the PA.  He asks my wife to sit on the exam table and does a physical exam (also a rare event these days). Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

Enough About Physician Empathy

Is anyone else tired of hearing about how important empathy is in the doctor-patient relationship? Every other day it seems a new study is talking about the therapeutic value of empathy. Enough already!

It’s not that I don’t believe that empathy is important — I do. I also believe the data that links physician empathy with improved patient outcomes, increased satisfaction, and better patient experiences.

A recent study released in Academic Medicine reported that “patients of physicians with high empathy scores were significantly more likely to have good control over their blood sugar as well as cholesterol, while the inverse was true for patients of physicians with low scores.”

Findings from this study by Hojat, et al. are consistent with a 2009 study by Rakel, et al. which found that among patients with the common cold, those with physicians displaying high empathy had a significantly shorter duration of illness and trend toward lesser severity of illness and higher levels of immune response compared to those patients whose physician displayed less empathy. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

When A World-Class Medical Institution Saves You Yet Fails You

Let me start by saying I really like MD Anderson Cancer Center. There is a lot to like. Take their tag line for example: “Making care history.” If anyone finds a cure for this cancer or that cancer, MD Anderson will have a hand in it, I’m sure. Hospitals could also learn a thing or two about the meaning of comprehensive care, clinical integration, and customer service from MD Anderson is well.

I have another reason why I like MD Anderson so well: They saved my wife’s life. You see, she was diagnosed back in November of 2004 with stage four non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). As anyone familiar with lung care knows, lung cancer is a very tough adversary. It’s an even tougher adversary when your insurance company insists that your local community hospital and oncologists are “just as good” as MD Anderson’s in terms of quality and outcomes.

You guessed it. In 2004, my wife and I had to fight long and hard to get our insurance carrier to authorize my wife care at MD Anderson, an out of network provider. I’m happy to say we won that fight back in 2004 and again just last week when my wife’s employer’s new insurance carrier refused to authorize her continued care at MD Anderson. You see, her new carrier wanted to rehash the whole medical necessity thing all over again.

Now you would think that a world-class organization like MD Anderson would do everything possible to help prospective patients deal with these kinds of insurance issues. After all, they seem to do everything for you once care is authorized. But you would be wrong. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*

Concierge Medicine: The Cost Of Healthcare “Room Service” And Other Hospital Amenities

A per­spec­tive in [a recent] NEJM con­sid­ers the Emerg­ing Impor­tance of Patient Ameni­ties in Patient Care. The trend is that more hos­pi­tals lure patients with hotel-like ameni­ties: Room ser­vice, mag­nif­i­cent views, mas­sage ther­apy, fam­ily rooms and more. These ser­vices sound great, and by some mea­sures can serve an institution’s bot­tom line more effec­tively than spend­ing funds on top-notch spe­cial­ists or state-of-the-art equipment.

Think­ing back on the last time I vis­ited some­one at Sloan Kettering’s inpa­tient unit, and I mean­dered into the bright lounge on the 15th floor, stocked with books, games, videos and other signs of life, I thought how good it is for patients and their fam­i­lies to have a non-clinical area like this. The “extra” facil­ity is privately-funded, although it does take up a rel­a­tively small bit of valu­able New York City hos­pi­tal space (what might oth­er­wise be a research lab or a group of nice offices for physi­cians or, dare I say, social work­ers) seems wonderful.

If real healthcare isn’t an even-sum expense prob­lem, I see no issue with this kind of hos­pi­tal accou­trement. As for room ser­vice and order­ing oat­meal for break­fast instead of insti­tu­tional pan­cakes with a side of thaw­ing orange “juice,” chicken salad sand­wiches, fresh sal­ads or broiled salmon instead of receiv­ing glop on a tray, that’s poten­tially less waste­ful and, depend­ing on what you choose, health­ier. As for yoga and med­i­ta­tion ses­sions, there’s rarely harm and, maybe occa­sion­ally, good (i.e. value).

But what if those resources draw funds away from nec­es­sary med­i­cines, bet­ter soft­ware for safer CT scans and phar­ma­cies, and hir­ing more doc­tors, nurses or aides? (I’ve never been in a hos­pi­tal where the nurses weren’t short-staffed.) Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

Infection Control And The Doctor-Patient Relationship

Hospitals have recently been stepping up their infection control procedures, in the wake of news about iatrogenic infections afflicting patients when they are admitted. Doctors are increasingly wearing a variety of protective garb — gowns, gloves, and masks — while seeing patients.

In an interesting New York Times column, Pauline Chen wonders how this affects the doctor-patient relationship. She cites a study from the Annals of Family Medicine, which concluded that,

fear of contagion among physicians, studies have shown, can compromise the quality of care delivered. When compared with patients not in isolation, those individuals on contact precautions have fewer interactions with clinicians, more delays in care, decreased satisfaction and greater incidences of depression and anxiety. These differences translate into more noninfectious complications like falls and pressure ulcers and an increase of as much at 100 percent in the overall incidence of adverse events.

Hospitals are in a no-win situation here. On one hand, they have to do all they can to minimize the risk of healthcare-acquired infections, but on the other, doctors need to strive for a closer bond with patients — which protective garb sometimes can impede. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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