How Much Do You Want Your Doctors To Say About Risks of Treatment?

This kind of paternalism, when a doctor assesses the risks and benefits, and spares the patient’s “knowing” seems anachronistic. But it may, still, be what many people are looking for when and if they get a serious illness. Not everyone wants a “tell me everything” kind of physician.

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer treatment, Empowered Patient, Informed Consent, Life as a Patient, Oncology (cancer), Patient Autonomy, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments on How Much Do You Want Your Doctors To Say About Risks of Treatment?

Do Adults Need Physicians to Tell Them to Exercise?

Whatever the reasons are that most doctors don’t bring up the issue, one might ask this: Why do adults need doctors to tell them about the health benefits of regular exercise? After all, it’s common knowledge –

Posted in Communication, Fitness, Patient-Doctor Relationship, Public HealthTagged , , , , , , , 1 Comment on Do Adults Need Physicians to Tell Them to Exercise?

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 […]

Posted in Books, Communication, Life, Medical Ethics, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , 4 Comments on Contemplating Empathy, Early This Morning After the Earthquake

Twitter, The Notificator, and Old Social Media News

A series of clicks this morning brought me to an interesting web finding in a Wiki-like Dead Media Archive that links to NYU’s Steinhart School of Media, Culture, and Communication. And there rests the Notificator, said (by me) to be Twitter’s great-great-great grandfather, with details: On September 9, 1932, the London Times printed an article […]

Posted in Communication, Health IT, Life in NYC, Medical History, Social Media, Wednesday Web SightingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Twitter, The Notificator, and Old Social Media News
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