Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
…I think the answer is inherent in the goal of being engaged, and that has to do with the concept of patient autonomy – what’s essentially the capacity of a person to live and make decisions according to one’s own set of knowledge, goals and values.
Autonomy in medicine, which borders on the empowerment idea, can be an aim in itself, and therefore valuable regardless of any measured outcome.
…the office has expanded and become so systematized that when I go there I don’t feel like I’m visiting a doctor, the kind of professional who sincerely cares about my health. Instead I feel like a commodity, which I suppose I am.
There’s been a recent barrage of med-blog posts on the unhappy relationship between doctors and electronic communications. The first, a mainly reasonable rant by Dr. Wes* dated August 7, When The Doctor’s Always In, considers email in the context of unbounded pressure on physicians to avail themselves to their patients 24/7. That piece triggered at […]
Kudos to my newest doctor, a dermatologist whom I met yesterday for evaluation of a small, benign-appearing mole I recently noted on my right leg. What she did right: 1. She saw me promptly, at the time of my scheduled appointment. (Thank you, you seem to value my time, as I do yours.) 2. In […]
Yesterday I visited my internist. I had no particular complaint. My back hurt no more than usual. The numbness in my left foot was neither better nor worse than it was last month. I wasn’t suffering from vertigo or abdominal pain. I went because I had an appointment to see her, nothing more.
Until just a few years ago, I rarely
(in the Style of a Magazine Cover)
If patients knew more:
1. they’d understand more of what doctors say;
2. they’d ask better questions;
3. they’d be more autonomous;
4. they’d make better decisions (ones they’re comfortable with, long-term);
5. they’d spend less money on care they don’t want or need.
If doctors knew more…
Recently in the Times’ “Patient Money” column, Lesley Alderman shared nine physicians’ views on how we might reduce our country’s health care mega-bill.
Here, I’ll review those comments, add my two cents to each, and then offer my suggestion (#10, last but not least!) regarding how I think we might reduce health medical costs in North America without compromising the quality of care doctors might provide.
The “answers” from…
Today the NY Times printed the third part of Amy Harmon’s excellent feature on the ups and downs and promise of some clinical trials for cancer. The focus is on a new drug, PLX4032, some people with melanoma who chose to try this experimental agent, and the oncologists who prescribed it to them.
What I like about this story is that, besides offering some insight on the drug itself, it balances the patients’ and doctors’ perspectives; it explains why some people might elect to take a new medication in an early-stage clinical trial and why some physicians push for these protocols because they think it’s best for their patients.
And it provides a window into the world of academic medicine, where doctors’ collaborate among themselves and sometimes with corporations.
Here’s some of what I learned:
“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)
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.
Yesterday, Dr. Pauline Chen reported in the New York Times on virtual visits, a little-used approach for providing care to patients hundreds or thousands of miles apart from their physicians.
Telemedicine depends on satellite technology and data transfer. It’s a theoretical and possibly real health benefit of the World Wide Web, that giant, not-new-anymore health resource that’s transforming medicine in more ways than we know.
Last week I received an email from a former patient. He has hemochromatosis, an inherited disposition to iron overload. His body is programmed to take in excessive amounts of iron, which then might deposit in the liver, glands, heart and skin. He mentioned “some amazing videos on hematology and hemochromatosis and genetics” he’d discovered on YouTube.
This is the future of medicine, I realized. … Whether physicians want their patients to search the Internet for medical advice is beside the point. We’re there already, whether or not it’s good for us and whether what we find there is true.
