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Cleveland Clinic physician Susan Rehm and her sister Renee were ambushed by "Today's" top stylists last week while watching the morning news show on the plaza in New York City.
See their new looks: http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=81257
What happens to the human spirit when caregivers deal every day with people in significant physical and emotional pain? Do we build so many barriers that we lose the ability to show compassion?
Furthermore, do medical schools, nursing schools, and healthcare organizations themselves provide any real training about how to cope with the stress of being a front-line healthcare provider?
After a recent surgery in a well-known hospital, Glenn Beck asks, "What has happened to compassion in healthcare? " His case may be extreme, but if you've ever been at the mercy of the healthcare system, it's likely that you won't find it difficult to believe.
Mr. Beck's example illustrates one of the reasons why CMS and Joint Commission are now taking such a hard look at organizational response to patient grievances.
"I go to the hospital because I can't take the pain anymore and I also can't go to the bathroom. So I have to be catheterized. I get to the hospital, I walk through the front door. I shouldn't say that. Impractically carried by my wife. She's helping me into the front desk, the reception area. The lady barely looks at me at the front desk. Now, I'm crying. I know that's unusual, you know, for me. I'm crying. My wife is holding me up and she says, my husband's doctor called, they're expecting him, he needs to have a catheter put in and he needs pain medication right away; he needs to be admitted. She said, okay, well, have a seat. And I just looked at her with tears in my eyes and I said, I don't think I can. She said, oh, yeah, hang on just a second. So she went back, she came back and said, somebody will be with you in a second. So we waited. She went back behind the counter and she talked to the two other nurses that were standing there and they talked about the things that they were going to do that weekend and, you know, what their holidays were like, et cetera, et cetera. They were having a pleasant old time. Meanwhile my wife is holding me up still waiting for the nurse to come back. Finally I said, excuse me, ma'am, is somebody coming for us? What is the latest? She said, jeez, I'll check, let me look, I'll go to triage and I'll look."
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They checked me in. It was about 4:00 in the morning now. I said to the nurse, I said, I'm having problems breathing. You've got to help me with the breathing. My anesthesiologist said that you need to monitor me. She looked at me and said, you look like you're breathing fine to me. Handed me a pillow and wished me good night.
Read the rest: Hospitals Gone Bad
Via Kevin MD: An Emergency Physician has a different take on Mr. Beck's story.
And Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Reporter has another: Five things not to do in the ER
If you were the newly appointed President & CEO of a financially failing academic medical center in serious trouble, what would you tackle first?
Paul Levy of Running a Hospital provides his answer in Looking back after six years at BIDMC. His first memo to the staff is an elegant example of honest, respectful, communication from the C-suite. Had I worked at BIDMC at the time his words would have motivated me to hopefulness, as they obviously did for many of the members of his staff.
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The first email I sent was dated Monday, January 07, 2002 at 11:48 AM, roughly four hours after I started work, and was simply entitled "Message for BIDMC".
I am honored and pleased to join Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as President and Chief Executive Officer, and I look forward to getting to know many of you personally. This is a wonderful institution, representing the best in academic medicine: exemplary patient care, extraordinary research, and fine teaching. However, the place is in serious trouble, and we are going to have to work very hard during the next few months if we are to secure our future as a non-profit academic medical center.
I promise to have an open administration, sharing with you as much information as possible to help you be part of solving the problems of the medical center. Here is where things stand, as of today. Over the last several years, during one of the greatest economic booms in American history, hundreds of millions of dollars of the BIDMC's assets have gone toward paying the operating losses of the hospital. This was money that ordinarily would have been used as the source of funds for new facilities and equipment, for expansion of programs, and as a cushion for hard economic times. For whatever set of reasons, there was a failure to act to stop this financial outflow. We now face our last chance to reverse this problem...
Update January 9th:
Alas, MSSPNexus did not make the final cut, but some other great blogs did, so be sure to stop by Medgadget to view the finalists in the 2007 Medical Weblog Awards and cast your votes for this year's winners.
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MSSPNexus is a 2007 Nominee in the MedGadget Medical Blog Awards category of Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog. The blog was nominated by Kim from Emergiblog, thanks Kim!
This is the fourth year that MedGadget has sponsored the Medical Blog Awards. The competition is designed to recognize the very best from the medical blogosphere, and to highlight the diversity and excitement of the world of medical blogs.
The categories for this year's awards:
-- Best Medical Weblog
-- Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2007)
-- Best Literary Medical Weblog
-- Best Clinical Sciences Weblog
-- Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog
-- Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog
-- Best Patient's Blog
-- Finalists will be announced on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008.
-- Voting will be open from Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 to midnight Sunday, January 20, 2008 (PST).
-- Winners will be announced on Wednesday, January 23, 2008.
Roland F. Chalifoux, Jr., DO, a West Virginia Neurosurgeon and long time critic of current standards in professional peer review, has started a new blog - Fighting For Hospital Privileges.
The author is certainly no fan of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) of 1986, about which he wrote, "HCQIA has become antiquated and used unfairly by some hospitals to effectively ruin as well as run a competent doctor out of town."
"The public and doctors alike believe in “good faith peer review”; however, until the playing field is balanced and the burden placed on hospitals to “prove” that a doctor was not practicing good, safe medicine as opposed to only being required to “state the problem,” doctors need to be wary of the fact that they have little to no rights when practicing medicine."
"In this day and age, when we all want a patient's bill of health, let's not forget that in order for patients to receive such benefits, doctors need not fear reprisal from their economic competitors or hospital administrators for practicing medicine in the patient's best interest. Currently, this system does not exist."
Having sat for years primarily on the "hospital" side of the table, I see some of the benefits of HCQIA. In my experience it is very difficult for physicians to openly criticize the care provided by a colleague. During those often emotional discussions I've heard the expression "There but for the grace of God go I." There is also understandable concern over being sued for having expressed a negative opinion, and HCQIA, as well as State law, offer some protection to the reviewers.
Dr. Chalifoux references the Poliner case in which a Dallas cardiologist was awarded a very large settlement for bad faith peer review. However, there is another side to the issue as demonstrated by the Kadlec Hospital case, where the courts determined that "hospitals have a duty to disclose information about their medical staff members to other health care providers in order to protect future patients when the doctor moves on."
Dr. Chalifoux brings up some points worthy of further discussion; no the system is not always fair. However, his stand on the issue appears to be completely one sided.
At some point we are all patients. When the system works well, and I believe it often does, it protects us all.
Thoughts?
Other Things Amanzi hosts the first-ever Grand Rounds from South Africa, complete with fabulous photographs. It's a treat for the eyes! Grand Rounds is a collection of the week's best posts from the medical blogosphere.
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