Internet-Based Medical Information May Prove More Trustworthy Than Printed Texts

Today Ed Silverman of Pharmalot considers the case of a ghost-written medical text’s mysterious disappearance. The 1999 book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care,” (reviewed in a psychiatry journal here) came under scrutiny last fall when it became evident that the physician “authors” didn’t just receive money from a […]

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Contemplating Empathy, Early This Morning After the Earthquake

Last night I began reading a long essay, Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. The work dates to 1993, and centers on the power of photographs of war. She considers Virginia Woolf’s earlier reflections on horrific images from the Spanish Civil War, in Three Guineas. Sontag writes: “Not to be pained by these […]

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The Flip Side of Unrealistic Optimism

Last week, Pauline Chen wrote on medical ethics and clinical trials. She reflects on her training at a cancer research hospital, where some cancer patients go with unrealistic optimism.

Like Dr. Chen, I spent part of my training at a famous cancer center where I worked as a resident and fellow on rotations. And yes, some patients were unreasonably optimistic and some – perhaps even most, it seemed – didn’t fully “get” the purpose of their trial, which in Phase I studies were not designed to help them. This is a real dilemma for treating oncologists.

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Portrait of a Peculiar Relationship at the End of Life

Last weekend I went to see a strange, slightly unnerving play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams. It’s a sad take on the end of life, and desperation in some lonely characters. Olympia Dukakis plays an aging, vain, older woman who’s dying of an unnamed condition. She takes morphine injections help […]

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Opening Up a Dialogue on the R-Word

Today a short article in the NY Times, New Kidney Transplant Policy Would Favor Younger Patients, draws my attention to a very basic problem in medical ethics: rationing. According to the Washington Post coverage, the proposal comes from the United Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond-based private non-profit group the federal government contracts for allocation […]

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A Note on Positive Thinking

Today I came upon a Jan 24 op-ed, A Fighting Spirit Won’t Change Your Life by Richard Sloan, PhD, of Columbia University’s Psychiatry Department. Somehow I’d missed this worthwhile piece on the sometimes-trendy notion of mind-over-matter in healing and medicine. Sloan opens with aftermath of the Tucson shootings: …Representative Giffords’s husband describes her as a […]

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Why the Term ‘Patient’ Is So Important in Health Care

roviding health care is or should be unlike other commercial transactions. The doctor, or other person who gives medical treatment, has a special professional and moral obligation to help the person who’s receiving his or her care. This responsibility – to heal, honestly and to the best of one’s ability – overrides any other commitments, or conflicts

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A Reversal on End-of-Life Planning

The Obama administration will cut a new Medicare provision to compensate providers for discussing end-of-life care, according to the New York Times. This is an unfortunate reversal. Too-often, doctors fail to have these discussions with their patients. This happens for many reasons including some physicians’ discomfort with the topic, their not wanting to diminish patients’ […]

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A Patient’s Internal Conflict of Interest: to Mention a Symptom, or Not?

Here’s a partial list of why some thoughtful, articulate patients might be reluctant to mention symptoms to their doctors:

1. Respect for the doctor – when the patient feels what he’s experiencing isn’t worth taking up a physician’s time, what I’d call the “time-worthy” problem;

2. Guilt – when the patient feels she shouldn’t complain about anything relatively minor, because she’s lucky to be alive;

3. Worry – when patient’s anxious or afraid the symptoms are a sign of the condition worsening, and so

Posted in Communication, Empowered Patient, Ideas, Life as a Patient, Medical Ethics, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , 2 Comments on A Patient’s Internal Conflict of Interest: to Mention a Symptom, or Not?

A Video About a Patient Who Might Have Too Much Information

A link to a video, the Too Informed Patient came my way several times lately. You can find the curious clip on NPR’s Marketplace site: The Too Informed Patient from Marketplace on Vimeo. — The skit depicts the interaction between a young man with a rash and his older physician. The patient is an informed […]

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Informed Consent on Paper, but Not in Reality

Over the long weekend I caught up on some reading. One article stands out. It’s on informed consent, and the stunning disconnect between physicians’ and patients’ understanding of a procedure’s value.

The study used survey methods to evaluate 153 cardiology patients’ understanding of the potential benefit of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, or angioplasty)…

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Copiapó Dreaming – The Copper Miners’ Tale

The 33 Chilean miners – mainly middle-aged and of modest means – zoomed up in high-tech capsules from the deep, would-be tomb where they’d been waiting for 69 days underground…

The amazing and nearly-too-good-to-be true news is that a top-notch team of engineers, doctors including the NASA/Johnson Space Center Deputy

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It’s Not About the Money

If physicians’ potential profit motives cloud the mammography debate, as the authors contend, that doesn’t mean that mammography is ineffective. Rather it signifies that doctors and scientists should analyze data and make clinical decisions in the absence of financial or other conflicts of interest.

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, health care costs, health care delivery, Medical Ethics, Oncology (cancer), PolicyTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on It’s Not About the Money

News, and Thoughts, on Comparative Effectiveness Research

What is comparative effectiveness research and why does it matter? The idea, basically, is to inform medical decisions with relevant data derived from well-designed clinical trials. This sort of research will provide the foundation for evidence-based medicine (EBM).

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Why Physicians Shouldn’t Tweet About Their Patients Or O.R. Cases

As a patient who’s been there, under anesthesia more times than I care to remember, I can’t imagine anything much worse than knowing while I’m unconscious my doctor might be on-line or even just dictating tweets instead of concentrating on me, my arteries and veins and spine and…

Posted in Communication, Health IT, Life as a Doctor, Medical Ethics, Privacy, Social MediaTagged , , , , , 6 Comments on Why Physicians Shouldn’t Tweet About Their Patients Or O.R. Cases

You’re Sick and I’m Not, Too Bad

“The insurance market as it works today basically slices and dices the population. It says, well you people with medical conditions, over here, and you people without them, over here…
– Jonathan Cohn, Editor of The New Republic, speaking on The Brian Lehrer Show, February 16, 2010*
—–
There’s a popular, partly true, sometimes useful and very dangerous notion that we can control our health. Maybe even fend off cancer.

I like the idea that we can make smart choices, eat sensible amounts of whole foods…

Posted in Essential Lessons, health care costs, Ideas, Medical Ethics, Policy, Public Health, RadioTagged , , , , , , , 1 Comment on You’re Sick and I’m Not, Too Bad

Health Care Costs, Communication and Informed Choices

For those of you who’ve been asleep for the past year: the health care costs conundrum remains unsolved. Our annual medical bills run in the neighborhood of $2.4 trillion and that number’s heading up. Reform, even in its watered-down, reddened form, has stalled.

Despite so much unending review of medical expenses – attributed variously to an unfit, aging population, expensive new cancer drugs, innovative procedures, insurance companies and big Pharma – there’s been surprisingly little consideration for patients’ preferences. What’s missing is a solid discussion of the type and extent of treatments people would want if they were sufficiently informed of their medical options and circumstances.

Maybe, if doctors would ask their adult patients how much care they really want, the price of health care would go down. That’s because many patients would choose less, at least in the way of technology, than their doctors prescribe. And more care.

What I’m talking about is the opposite of rationing. It’s about choosing.

Posted in cancer treatment, Communication, Empowered Patient, health care costs, Informed Consent, Medical Ethics, Patient AutonomyTagged , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on Health Care Costs, Communication and Informed Choices

On Precious

This is my first film review, if it is that.

I was tempted to write about Ethan Hawke, hematologist among vampires in Daybreakers, but gore’s not my favorite genre. A mainstream choice would have been Harrison Ford solving the enzyme deficiency of Pompe disease in Extraordinary Measures, but I didn’t get sucked in.

I chose Precious, instead. This luminous movie relates to the practice of medicine everyday, big-time.

Posted in Communication, Essential Lessons, Life, Life as a Patient, Life in NYC, Medical Education, Medical Ethics, Movies, Patient Autonomy, Reviews, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on On Precious

Henrietta’s Cells Speak

“One of the ways that I gained the trust of the family is that I gave them information.” (R. Skloot, a journalist, speaking about her interactions with Henrietta Lacks’ family, Columbia University, 2/2/10)

Posted in Books, Communication, Essential Lessons, Ideas, Informed Consent, Life as a Patient, Medical Education, Medical Ethics, Oncology (cancer), Patient Autonomy, Patient-Doctor Relationship, Privacy, Reviews, Science, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on Henrietta’s Cells Speak

How to Avoid Death in the ICU

It was sometime in April, 1988. I was putting a line in an old man with end-stage kidney disease, cancer (maybe), heart failure, bacteria in his blood and no consciousness. Prince was on the radio, loud, by his bedside. If you could call it that – the uncomfortable, curtained compartment didn’t seem like a good place for resting.

Posted in cancer treatment, Communication, Empowered Patient, Essential Lessons, health care costs, Life as a Doctor, Medical Ethics, Palliative Care, Patient Autonomy, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments on How to Avoid Death in the ICU
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