June 28th, 2011 by Berci in News, True Stories
Tags: Blogging, Britain, Cancer, Daniel Sencier, Dissatisfaction, Law Suit, Legal Action, NHS, Oncology, Web 2.0
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I’ve recently come across a really controversial story about a cancer patient who blogged and complained about his hospital treatment and has been threatened with legal action by an NHS trust.
Daniel Sencier was worried about delays at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary and had surgery at another hospital. He complained to North Cumbria University Hospital Trust and it came up with an action plan to improve care.
But Mr Sencier, 59, of Penrith, then received a letter threatening legal action. The trust declined to comment.
Mr Sencier, a photography student, had expected an apology but then received a letter saying the trust would consider legal action if his blog contained “unsubstantiated criticism”.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
June 28th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in True Stories
Tags: Bagels, Boobs, Breast Cancer, Cancer Screening, Mammograms
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I don’t always practice what I preach. Regular mammograms, for instance. Last year I realized I had skipped a few, so I decided to turn my procrastination into an opportunity to reach out to those of my patients guilty of the same thing.
I made arrangements with my hospital to monopolize half their schedule one Saturday morning, put flyers up in my office and talked it up like crazy to every eligible woman I saw. On the appointed day, I brought a whole bunch of bagels, half a dozen spreads (I asked the ladies to bring their own coffee), and we proceeded to have a blast! Or as much fun as you can have getting your boobs squished. Hey; it’s all in the name of early detection.
Last year’s final tally was a bakers dozen (twelve patients plus me), out of which about 5 people were called back for more views (mainly those with old films not readily available from other institutions), 2 benign biopsies were done, and one case of invasive breast cancer was diagnosed and treated. Not bad, I thought. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
June 26th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Health Tips, True Stories
Tags: 8500 Feet, Altitude, Colorado, Diamox, Fatigue, headache, High Altitude, High Altitude Sickness, Hydration, Insomnia, Mountains, Nausea, Oxygen Bar
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Hi! Greetings from Breckenridge, Colorado. At 10,000 feet, I am told it is the highest resort town in North America. The Rocky Mountain scenery is breathtaking. But there’s a problem for about one in four of us who visit here, especially people like me who live at sea level. We can get hit with high altitude sickness and a few days ago, I was one of the unlucky ones.
What happens is your body isn’t used to the thin air and your blood has difficulty getting enough oxygen to your body. It usually happens at altitudes over 8,500 feet. You get an ongoing headache, you feel tired, you have insomnia (I was sleepless for two nights!), you could have nausea and certainly fatigue. Drinking lots of water and passing up alcohol can help, but even then some people have problems.
When I finally saw a family doctor – Doctor P.J. – he told me it’s genetic. Some people have trouble “acclimatizing” and others don’t, but there’s no easy way to know who will be affected before you make the climb. Now that I know I have difficulty I will take a prescription medicine (Diamox) ahead of coming up here again.
Doctor P.J. says even Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
June 24th, 2011 by Bongi in True Stories
Tags: Birth, Compassion, Death, Delivery, Fetoscope, Humanity, Medical Students, Miscarriage, Preterm Delivery, Sad Story
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It affected me. Not just it, but the fact that it didn’t seem to affect my colleague.
I was a lowly fourth year medical student, delivering babies for all I was worth. Looking back, I realize I enjoyed it. The whole ‘joy of a baby coming into the world’ really gave me joy that a baby was coming into the world. Call me sentimental but I saw each birth as beautiful. Somehow I could look past the meconeum and the amniotic fluid and the episiotomies and see what was actually going on. It was a happy time for the mother (mostly). It was the beginning of hopes and dreams. It was a new start for the baby (obviously) and for the mother, and in a sense, each new birth may have signified a potential new start for me.
She was excited about her new baby, but there was a cloud over her entire admission. The reason she had come in to the hospital was because she hadn’t felt the baby kicking for the last 24 hours and she was worried. Quite soon we were worried, too. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
June 21st, 2011 by Shadowfax in True Stories
Tags: Cath Lab, EP Lab, ICU, New ER, New Hospital, No Triage, O.R., Private Rooms, State-Of-The-Art, Transition, Vascular Lab
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Tomorrow we’ll be far away
Tomorrow is the judgement day
Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store
One more dawn…
On an unrelated note, tomorrow morning at 5AM our new ER opens and the old one closes down. I’ll be there working clinically. To the degree that it doesn’t interfere with patient care, I’ll live-tweet the experience.
For those not familiar with the institution or the project — it’s a 110,000 annual visit ER closing down and reopening next door in a new, state of the art 83 bed ER, with an entire new 10-story hospital opening directly above at the same time, more or less. The logistics of the transition are pretty staggering. The ER will be the first unit to open. The old ambulance bay will have a barrier put up at 5AM and the new department’s ambulance bay and drop-off will be illuminated at that time and all new patients will go there. The staff closing out the old shop will dispo all the patients they can, and at a certain point, maybe by ten AM, any patients still in the old ER will roll across the skybridge to the new facility. We will open one cath lab and one OR in the new hospital while retaining capability at the old rooms. New patients admitted will go to the new tower and the old inpatient units will start discharging patients. By Friday, any patients still in the old tower will move across to the new inpatient units. They’ll be bringing the other ORs and interventional labs online in a stepwise fashion during the week. Interestingly, a lot of expensive equipment is being “salvaged” from the old hospital. For example, the telemetry monitors in the ICU — about half of the new ICU beds have monitors now. When a patient is discharged from the old ICU, they will take that monitor across to the new building and install it in a new ICU bed, which will only then become open for a new patient. Eventually, all the monitors will be re-installed in the new units. Elective surgeries are pretty much out this week. When everything is open we will have 16 ORs and 8 cath/vascular/EP labs with room for four more as need demands.
For the ER (and more importantly for ER patients) this will be Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
