Through poetry, art and music, people describe and reflect on their experiences with health care. In this Def Poetry video, Thea Monyee and GaKnew Rowel tell about the birth of their daughter.
Archive for January, 2011
1st Person: Talking about Health Care
First PersonMonday, January 31st, 2011
Inside Health Care: Who ARE you anyway, Doctor?
CFAH StaffFriday, January 28th, 2011
Pediatric specialist, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian MD, writes about a time when he forgot to introduce himself to a new patient.. Ten minutes into the visit, the mother asks, “I’m sorry, and you are?…” Rarely does Dr. Vartabedian forget to introduce himself and neglect to wear his ID badge. Like many physicians, he does not wear a white coat, and a colleague once described him as looking like an algebra teacher. He was surprised that the mother did not ask sooner for his identity and recommends that patients should always know who they are working with. Likewise, providers should be diligent with introducing themselves and wearing identification. Have you found yourself in a similar situation in the doctor’s office?
On the Patient Empowerment Blog, Trisha Torrey recognizes the problem with the lack of identification in the clinical setting, and reflects deeper on the issue of patient safety. She says nametags are a good start, but they may not be revealing enough. She cites the shocking case of Lewis Blackman, who was treated by a resident or student doctor and died from improper care. She advises people that it’s okay to ask the position of the clinician and encourages that the distinction between doctors and students be made clear.
For more information, please consult our two recent Prepared Patient feature articles designed to help you understand who is providing your care: Your Doctor’s Office Demystified and In Case of Emergency: Who’s Who in the ER.
The Conversation Continues: In the ER
CFAH StaffThursday, January 27th, 2011
McDonald’s Medicine: Are We Too Impatient to Wait for Care? Dr. Zachary F. Meisel and Dr. Jesse M Pines, two ER docs, in their TIME newsmagazine feature say, “Spend time in a busy ER and you’ll hear a recurrent theme among the harried staff: patients in the U.S. want their health care like they want their food – served up speedily and made ‘your way.’” Their question: Is McDonald’s-style medicine a good or bad thing?
A new study published in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine found that “elderly patients with dementia and delirium who are taken to a hospital emergency department often do not comprehend why they are there and do not understand discharge instructions from doctors or nurses.” How does this affect their ER and follow-up care?
More on ER’s in the Prepared Patient feature article: Who’s Who in the ER.
Those Clever Drug Companies, Again
Trudy LiebermanThursday, January 27th, 2011
If prizes were given for ingenious marketing, drug companies would win top honors. Like most businesses, they want to expand markets—that means getting you to buy more drugs whether you need them or not. Their appetite for finding new ways of doing that is insatiable. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health got some press a week or two ago with a study showing that drug makers fund health advocacy organizations—the ones that help people cope with debilitating diseases like mental disorders, diabetes, cancer and sleep disorders.
This practice has been going on for some time. A few years ago in the Columbia Journalism Review, I revealed how the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) was tied to the drug industry. Makers of sleeping pills contributed nearly $1 million of the group’s $3.6 million budget. Sepracor, which had just embarked on a big ad campaign to sell the new sleeping pill Lunesta, had given the NSF a $300,000 grant to produce a series of “Sleep Medicine Alerts”—brochures to educate doctors about insomnia. Presumably these were ultimately intended to entice doctors to prescribe Lunesta.
Since I wrote that story, quantifying how much money is being spent to tie advocacy groups to a drug maker’s purse strings suddenly has become easier. Thanks to the terms of a legal settlement with pharmaceutical manufacturers, drug makers have to start revealing financial data, including grants they made to disease groups. Researchers at the Mailman School examined data disclosed by Eli Lilly & Co. from the first half of 2007 and found that advocacy groups were not keen on sharing with the public—including their members—how much they had received from Lilly. Only one-quarter of the 161 organizations disclosed on their websites that they took drug company money; 18 percent revealed in their annual reports that they received Lilly money; and only 1 percent listed Lilly on a corporate sponsors page.
Advocacy groups got some $3.2 million from Lilly during this period. It’s hardly surprising that they targeted groups representing patients with neurological or psychiatric disorders, endocrine disorders like diabetes, and cancer. Lilly markets drugs in these categories.
These latest disclosures follow the release of data last fall from ProPublica that showed hundreds of the nation’s doctors were also on the take from drug makers. The news organization revealed that more than 300 docs collected over $100,000 in speaking fees in 2009. Drug manufacturers typically find doctors who treat patients likely to use their drugs and use them as pitchmen, all in the name of medical education.
ProPublica reporters said they hoped their stories would spark conversations between patients and their doctors about what drugs were prescribed. The same advice might be applied to information about drugs or any recommended treatments made by advocacy groups with financial links to drug companies.
ProPublica apparently took advantage of the same drug maker data sets that the Mailman School researchers used. More data will become available in 2013, which will undoubtedly bring more disclosures about potential conflicts of interest. What’s a poor patient to do? It would be too bad if all this new information causes patients to throw up their hands and tune out, asking “what else is new?” For sure, it will cause more dissonance. Patients know something is rotten, but what are they supposed to do? Figuring that out is the hard part.
There just might be too much information, or TMI, as the younger crowd calls it to work with.
Aftershock:
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