June 16th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Dr. Karen Li, Family Medicine, Fixing Primary Care, General Medicine, Internal Medicine, Lack of Primary Care, Leave The Medical Profession, Leaving Primary Care, Long Hours, Newsweek, Pediatrics, Physician Burnout, Physician Salaries, Primary Care Crisis, Primary Care Doctors, Primary Care Shortage, Smaller Paychecks, Workplace Environment For Doctors
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There’s little question that the workplace environment for doctors is deteriorating. Especially in primary care, where physicians are arguably needed the most.
That’s why is so disheartening to read this Newsweek essay from pediatrician Karen Li, explaining why she left the field. Much of her piece can be attributed to the bad old days of managed care, where doctors were frustrated by the bureaucratic impediments placed before them. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
June 16th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Doctor-Patient Communication, Doctor-Patient Connection, Doctor-Patient Responsibility, Family Medicine, General Medicine, Internal Medicine, Medical Records, Patient Confidentiality, Patient Embarrassment, Patient Privacy, Patient-Doctor Partnership, Patient-Doctor Relationship, Primary Care Physician, Private Nature Of Medicine, Secrets From Your Doctor, Shouldn't Keep From Your Doctor, Tell Your Doctor
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It’s important to have an open relationship with your primary care physician because the more he or she knows about your health and lifestyle, the better able he or she is to diagnose illnesses as they come up.
You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic and not tell him that the brake is sticking, and a human organism is thousands of times more complicated than a car. But patients are shy. They’re embarrassed. They don’t want you to think badly about them, so they often leave out important information that’s critical for the physician to know. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
June 16th, 2010 by SteveSimmonsMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, True Stories
Tags: DocTalker, Dr. Steve Simmons, Healthcare IT, Healthcare reform, ICD-10, ICD-9 Codes, Meaninful Use, Patient-Doctor Relationship, Primary Care
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I believe that those controlling the purse strings are steering modern medicine towards the practice of seeing patients more as the sum of their medical problems than as individual people. Patients have become streams of data as opposed to real human lives.
Consider the dynamics of a family: a wife may worry about her husband while their child adores a father she instinctively knows to be irreplaceable. Modern medicine, however, may only see a diabetic with hypertension and a cholesterol-level running too high. The computers programmed for those advocating the power of data to revolutionize medicine would boil this man down to his “meaningful” essence — numbers, for the above imaginary man: 250.00, 401.0, and 272.0. Read more »
June 13th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: 10-50, Accidential Death, Compassion, Coroner, Dead On Arrival, Dead Person, Death Of Strangers, DOA, ED, Emergency Department, Emergency Medicine, Emergency Room, EMS, EMT, ER, General Medicine, Loss, Motor Vehicle Accident, Mourning, Paramedics, Patient Dies, Signal Nine, Sudden Death, Tragedy, Trauma Patients, Victim Dead At The Scene
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I was about to leave work a few nights ago when EMS was dispatched to a 10-50, which is a motor vehicle accident.
Enough years in emergency care and that tone makes your radar, but doesn’t create much of a blip. Many of those crashes have EMS arrive, only to discover no injuries. Some have patients transported, with minor problems that lead to their speedy evaluation and discharge from our ER. A few have serious, life-threatening injuries. They take all our speed, skill and attention to save life and limb. And often, require transfer to other facilities.
But this last call was none of those. Around 1AM the radio traffic crackled back to dispatch (which we could hear in the emergency department): “Probable Signal Nine.” Signal Nine means the victim is dead at the scene. Not “Dead On Arrival” (DOA) at the hospital, but no hospital necessary.
I knew the paramedics were finished when they asked dispatch to call for the coroner. And my heart sank a little. For all that a multi-trauma is work, I’d rather do it anytime than have someone die, and someone learn of the death. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
June 13th, 2010 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Cardiology, Cardioversion, Occam, Occam's Razor, PFTs, Primarcy Care, Pulmonary Function Tests, Pulmonary Stress Test, Pulmonology, Wrong Diagnosis
1 Comment »
Occam’s razor is a well-known logical principle often applied in medicine. It states that the simplest explanation for a complaint or symptom is usually the correct one. Most of the time, Occam’s razor serves the diagnostician well, but when the actual problem is complex or unexpected, patients can be sent down expensive and even life-threatening diagnostic rabbit holes.
A friend of mine is an 80-pack-a-year smoker. He was complaining of shortness of breath, worsening over a couple of months, and his primary care physician sent him to a pulmonologist. The assumption was that the shortness of breath was related to COPD from his chronic smoking — and that indeed would have been the most likely explanation. Read more »
