November 14th, 2011 by Emergiblog in Opinion
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Reader’s Digest has published an article, “50 Secrets Nurses Won’t Tell You“. The link will take you to the article itself, and Sandy Summers has written a review of the article at The Truth About Nursing.
There are some interesting “secrets” here – and you’ll recognize a few of the names!
Gina from Code Blog is in there, and so is Jo from Head Nurse!
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I’ll be the first person to tell you that I am not a perfect person, and not a perfect nurse, but two of these “secrets” really ticked me off.
Royally.
The first one: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
September 25th, 2010 by AndrewSchorr in Better Health Network, True Stories
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The old joke about psychological therapists is they are among the biggest consumers of therapy themselves. Lately, I have been noticing more and more how a significant portion of the people we meet wearing white lab coats have a very personal connection to the medical work they do. For them it is not a job, a meal ticket, or just putting their years of training into practice, it is a mission connected to something in their past, something in their own body, or the health of a loved one.
A recent example is Kaiten Kormanik. She is 23 and has had the genetic condition PKU since birth. She has to follow a strict low protein diet or otherwise risk severe negative effects on her brain. If you toured the labs of The Children’s Hospital of UPMC in Pittsburgh you might bump into her as she does research for her Ph.D. on, guess what?- genetic illnesses in children. And she often works alongside Dr. Gerald Vockley, the very expert physician who guides her care. As you can imagine, Kaitlen thinks about her own childhood and the faces of other children every day. You can hear her story on one of our recent programs.
Irl Hirsh, M.D., at the University of Washington, is one of America’s most famous diabetes doctors. He has diabetes himself and has all the challenges everyone with this disease has in managing it. You can hear his story on one of our earlier programs on diabetes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
June 23rd, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
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Do doctors take care of themselves? Sometimes patients may better follow the advice of physicians who aren’t obese and don’t smoke. That was a question asked in a post last year, entitled “When fat doctors talk to obese patients.”
According to studies, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, it’s a mixed bag:
Physicians as a group are leaner, fitter and live longer than average Americans. Male physicians keep their cholesterol and blood pressure lower. Women doctors are more likely to use hormone-replacement therapy than their patients. Doctors are also less likely to have their own primary care physician—and more apt to abuse prescription drugs.
Clearly there’s room for improvement. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
June 12th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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You know that person you work with, the one that always seems to be in a bad mood, the one that never smiles, the one that never has a nice thing to say and complains about every little thing? The person that just seems miserable? I don’t think any of us would say: “Oh, I want to be just like him or her!”
Now think about the person who attracts you and who you want to be around. It’s the person that’s full of life, who is happy and grateful, and who can always find kind words to say and share a smile. It’s the person with that contagious smile that radiates and instantly lifts your spirits, the type of person who is sure of themselves and who isn’t afraid to say “no.”
As individuals, we are unique and we have the ability to build a life filled with passion, purpose, happiness and vitality. By taking the goodness and strength that lies within us, we can become a positive magnet for others. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
May 5th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
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It’s all too easy to try and quantify everything in medicine. We are, after all, under the widely held delusion that medicine is like physics. A thing that follows fixed, predictable mathematical models. A thing reproducible if only algorithm A is followed for this disease and algorithm B is followed for that disease.
This belief is also held by the government, which doesn’t want to pay for readmissions or mistakes. Because it is believed that all things in medicine can be known from an exam, some labs, some tests, and some studies.
Nevertheless, things happen. Disease are transmitted in public or by families. Medications don’t always work. Bodies change. Bodies age. Humans are non-compliant. Humans are suffering from physiologic phenomena we can’t yet comprehend. Viruses are synergistic with other diseases.
The immunity of our patients is affected by their happiness, their diet, their work history, their family. The algorithms necessary to make medicine anything like physics would be mathematically beyond comprehension. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
