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.
Being isolated in a hospital room leaves you vulnerable to doctors who may be inappropriate, rude and even abusive. You might consider that having the capacity to call for help – to Tweet – is empowering. Health care #911, and very public! But…
Published trials can be flawed. Even if they’re well-analyzed, the findings can be hard to interpret when it comes to a single patient’s course and well-being. What’s a dying man to do?
What Deb did, and I thank her for this, is offer an extreme example of patient-centered care. Among other things, she did everything possible to assure that the people caring for her perceive her as a human being who loves dancing.
Hard to fathom that in 2013 we’re exploring “pilot” sites where patients can enroll in a program that allows them to transmit their electronic health images to doctors in other cities.
Can a good doctor, or a nurse, or a physical therapist, or any other person employed by the health care system, serve as a patient advocate?
She writes: “I believe that every educated person must at the very least understand how these interpreters of medical knowledge examine, or should examine, it to arrive at the conclusions.”
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.
Last week the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) held its annual summit. The meeting drew over 600 women to its opening rally in a Crystal City ballroom on Saturday, along with students who participated in sessions for Emerging Leaders, and a few men who joined in lectures and panels, and lobbied on Tuesday on Capitol […]
The unreasonable price of the medical records, combined with the delay in receiving them, exemplifies unnecessary harms patients encounter in an outdated, disjointed health care system.
Over the weekend I developed another bout of diverticulitis. Did the usual: fluids, antibiotics, rest, avoided going to the ER, cancelled travel plans. One of my doctors asked a very simple question: is this happening more frequently? The answer, we both knew, was yes. But I don’t have a Personal Health Record (PHR) that in […]
