Topic: doctor-patient care

Obese Docs Less Likely To Diagnose Obese Patients

Whether a doctor’s weight interferes with his or her ability to diagnose patients is a question I would normally consider stupid and insulting. But new research shows it might actually be the case—at least when that diagnosis is obesity. According to a study published this month in the journal Obesity, physicians who were overweight or obese were far less likely to diagnose obese patients than docs in the normal weight range. More »

My Miscarriage Taught Me To Stand Up Against My Doctors

For the past six months, I’ve been chronicling my family’s struggle with secondary infertility on Blisstree’s sister-site, Mommyish. It’s been a long, emotional journey filled with plenty of frustration and more than a couple tears. My husband and I have been trying to conceive for nineteen months and counting. This December, I prepared to write a good-bye to my weekly posts on in vitro fertilization and fertility clinic drama. Finally, miraculously, joyously… we were pregnant. I was so ecstatic that I simply didn’t know how to hold it in. At seven weeks along, I shared the good news with my family and some co-workers. It was just before the holidays and my life seemed to be one big cloud of optimism and hope: At long last, I was pregnant and I simply couldn’t contain it. More »

Is Doctor Avoidance Causing America’s Obesity Problem?

“It’s as unreasonable to say I didn’t quit smoking because my doctor didn’t tell me to as it is to say I didn’t lose weight because my doctor didn’t tell me to. Everybody knows you shouldn’t smoke, and everybody knows you should be at a healthy weight. It’s not a mystery.”
So Dr. Cynthia Ferrier told NPR in response to complaints that physicians don’t provide adequate weight loss advice, in spite of America’s overwhelming obesity problem. But many obese patients say they feel as if their doctors are uncomfortable discussing their weight, and surveys show that many overweight patients feel stigmatized by their doctors. More »

Dr. Walmart Is Ready For The Next Patient

Walmart may not be big on giving its employees great health benefits, but apparently the superstore has big ambitions when it comes to offering medical care to its customers: On Tuesday, they announced ambitions to “dramatically … lower the cost of healthcare … by becoming the largest provider of primary healthcare services in the nation,” simultaneously announcing that they wouldn’t be offering health benefits to new part-time employees. More »

Real Talk: How Hard Is It To Get And Abuse Prescription Drugs?

It seems like it should be difficult to get and abuse prescription drugs, but judging by some of this month’s top stories—Dr. Conrad Murray‘s guilty verdict in the Michael Jackson death trials; Kim Richards‘ recent revelation that her prescriptions are making her seem drunk; new studies documenting the epidemic of death by prescription painkiller overdose—it’s not. For all the debate over legalization of pot, we seem to have bigger fish to fry: Legal, doctor-prescribed drugs. More »

Kim Richards Isn’t Drunk; She’s On A Dangerous Cocktail Of Prescription Drugs

Kim Richards‘ bizzare behavior, slurred speech, half-closed eyes, and other symptoms that would seem to indicate that she’s drunk are apparently not due to alcohol; they’re due to a dangerous combination of prescription drugs, according to Dr. Paul Nassif. Like Michael Jackson, whose recent death trial verdict has put prescription drug overdose in the spotlight, it appears that Richards has likely accumulated her collection of pills to formulate a potentially risky prescription med cocktail. More »

Why Dr. Conrad Murray’s Guilty Verdict Is A Watershed Moment For Medicine

Dr. Conrad Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter yesterday, the jury unequivocally placing blame on his bad medicine–specifically, an irresponsible propofol prescription–for Michael Jackson‘s death. Their verdict isn’t just a moment to be remembered by Jackson’s family, or the throngs of fans that could be heard cheering outside the courthouse in Los Angeles yesterday; it was a watershed moment in medicine, setting a precedent for medical ethics, declaring that it’s time for more doctors to take greater responsibility for patient care in their medical practice. Which, frankly, if we look around us at the crumbling condition of America’s health: It is. More »

Michael Jackson Death Trial Verdict: Dr. Conrad Murray Found Guilty Of Involuntary Manslaughter

On day two of deliberations, the jury in the Michael Jackson death trials reached a verdict, finding Dr. Conrad Murray guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The prosecution’s argument was that Dr. Murray violated all kinds of medical ethics by administering propofol, a highly dangerous drug, to a patient who was clearly addicted to the drug. The defense argued that he couldn’t have been responsible for such an erratic patient’s health. More »

Steve Jobs Was A Difficult Patient, But Is That A Bad Thing?

The release of Steve Jobs‘ biography has led to a frenzy of health articles about how he was a difficult patient. He didn’t always heed the advice of his doctors. He told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he stalled on surgery to try treating his pancreatic cancer with a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and other alternative therapies (including psychics). Like anyone else, I feel sorry for his family’s loss and grief for the world’s loss of a great visionary, but ultimately, Jobs’ decisions as a patient make me hold him in greater, not lesser, esteem.
More »

What We're Reading:

Want a Healthier Husband? Nagging Helps.

Several studies indicate that marriage is a health-booster for men, but did you know that rounds of nagging are also associated with better health for men? Scrap the food; it seems nagging is the way to a man’s heart. Or, at least to his healthy heart, says new research. A little nagging goes a long way—all the way to the doctor’s office, in fact. Men who are (gently) reminded (ahem) have a tendency to actually book doctor’s appointments and get to the hospital faster, the research has found. More »

Research Says Real Hospitals Really Are Like Grey’s Anatomy

Here’s my embarrassing admission of the day: I really like watching shows like Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy (in the good years, of course; I have no idea what kind of shenanigans Meredith and the rest of Seattle Grace is up to now). But like any rational television viewer, I realize that constant inter-hospital affairs, physician conflicts, and patient-doctor conflict over treatment methods are not the status quo. Or ARE they? A recent survey found that over two-thirds of doctors observe other doctors disrupting patient care or collegial relations at least once a month; one out of 10 said they see this kind of behavior daily. So, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a 10% chance that my favorite medical dramas are factually correct! More »

Lactose Intolerance: Just Your Imagination, Study Says

I know that some health problems are legitimately psychosomatic, and I know that makes it complicated for doctors to diagnose and treat some patients, but a recent study saying that two-thirds of lactose intolerance cases are all in patients’ heads kind of makes me mad.
The study, conducted by researchers at the gastroenterology unit of IRCCS-Ca Granda in Milan, found that only one-third of patients who report gas, pain, bloating, and nausea after consuming dairy actually suffered lactose intolerance; the rest are just inexplicable “psychological issues.” The study findings themselves are quite interesting — something serious is going on with patients if that many are having a reaction to dairy that’s not cause by actual lactose intolerance — but the conclusion seems like pretty lazy medicine, to me. More »

Doctor vs. Patient: We Need Better Communication, Not Faith

We’ve all read articles about questions to always ask your doctor, how to get the most out of your physical, and most of us have also searched the bejesus out of WebMD. We’re practically equipped with our own diagnosis and list of treatment options before we’ve even seen our physician. But in a new era of patient knowledge and responsibility, doctor-patient relationships are far from improved. Patients are frequently dissatisfied with doctor care, and doctors are forced to spend less time with patients than ever before to satisfy insurance companies: Not exactly a formula for top-of-the-line healthcare. Two articles published this week tackled the problem of doctor-patient relationships: One, written by a physician, argued that more of us need to take a leap of faith and trust our docs. Another, written by a CNN health writer, outlines proposals from a Medical College Admission Test committee that wants incoming medical students to be screened for better social skills. So what’s the answer? More »

Doctors Are Getting More Time Off, But Are Female M.D.s Getting Left Behind?

A recent New York Times article, More Physicians Say No to Endless Workdays, describes a “sweeping cultural overhaul of medicine’s traditional ethos” by which more young doctors are choosing paths that allow them a better work-life balance, centering the story around Kate Dewar, a resident who chose a hospital job instead of the taxing private practice route that her father and grandfather followed, a choice which allows her to spend more time with her newborn twins than her father and grandfather ever had. But even if doctors are making strides in their personal life, I think the article glossed over some equally important issues regarding women and medicine: By focusing solely on a woman who chose family time over professional success, the article quietly suggests that women aren’t up to full-on practice of their fathers, and it also seems to imply that the only benefit of a doctor who’s not on call 24/7 is that they can make it to their baseball games. What about male doctors who’d like a path that allows more time off? And wouldn’t patients benefit from doctors (both male and female) who have a better work-life balance? Most peoples’ work performance profits from adequate rest and personal time; not just women who can’t bear to be away from their kids. More »