Day: November 2, 2010

Top 10 Tips on How To Treat Patients – my guest post on ‘Better Health’

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

This Heart Sisters original article was reprinted today as a guest post on the website BETTER HEALTH

 

hospital

An open letter to all hospital employees,

After a particularly bizarre experience undergoing a treadmill stress echocardiogram at your hospital recently, I decided to do something that I have never done before. I called the Cardiology Department manager to complain about her staff. Incidentally, a recent survey of international tourists found that Canadians were #1 in only one category:

“Least likely to complain when things go wrong”

So you can appreciate that lodging an official complaint is a fairly Big Deal up here!
 Continue reading “Top 10 Tips on How To Treat Patients – my guest post on ‘Better Health’” →

Four ingredients in the heart patient’s recipe for stress

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

While what stresses you is different from what stresses your neighbour, the recipe for stress is universal. So are the four ingredients in this recipe, according to the Centre for Studies on Human Stress at the University of Montréal.

This Centre, by the way, is a remarkably helpful resource if you’re one of those people who have become so chronically stressed day to day that you no longer think this state of being is even abnormal anymore.

Your body’s natural response to psychological stressors – the release of stress hormones – can lead to poor health outcomes if it becomes chronic.

It struck me that the Centre’s list of four ingredients that reliably elicit this stress response are also those that make a heart disease diagnosis itself so continually stressful.  They include:   Continue reading “Four ingredients in the heart patient’s recipe for stress” →