Category: Cardiology 101

posts here focus on a variety of topics all about the heart and how it works

Caring neglect: behaviours that lead us to believe our healthcare professionals don’t care

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky) 

A few years after I survived a misdiagnosed heart attack in 2008, I read a U.K. study focused on what researchers at the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics call Patient Neglect.(1)  This healthcare phenomenon includes both Procedural Neglect (“failing to achieve the objective standards of patient care”) and Caring Neglect (“behaviours that lead patients and observers to believe that staff have uncaring attitudes.”) Continue reading “Caring neglect: behaviours that lead us to believe our healthcare professionals don’t care” →

Yes, doctor. Cold can make angina symptoms worse.

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky) 

On November 25th (the morning of my mastectomy), I was lying on a hospital gurney in a wide sunlit corridor, waiting to be wheeled into Operating Room #4 for surgery.  I eavesdropped on small talk from hospital staff coming and going around me who were pausing to chat with waiting patients. I was surprised when one of the random surgeons stopped alongside my gurney to say hello. I can’t recall how that brief conversation with a surgeon I did not know somehow morphed into the topic of angina symptoms, but here’s how it went. Continue reading “Yes, doctor. Cold can make angina symptoms worse.” →

Clinical “noise” in medicine: it’s not what you think

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ❤️   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

Noise is getting in the way of good medical practice and better patient outcomes, according to Dr. Kamran Abbasi, Editor-In-Chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in a recent column he called What is Clinical Noise? – and How to Silence It. But he wasn’t referring to annoying loud noises in our environment, but to unwanted distractions in medicine.
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 Dr. Abbasi illustrates that noise by picturing a dart board with darts sprayed all around the bullseye, distracting players from focusing on what matters to dart players: hitting the bullseye.  .

Continue reading “Clinical “noise” in medicine: it’s not what you think” →

Is numbness our new normal?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ❤️   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

“We don’t need bigger lives – we need to feel more present in the ones we already have.”

That’s how Los Angeles physician and author Dr. Alona Pulde opened her column last month in Psychology Today.

I could immediately relate while reading these words:

“We move through our routines. We do what’s expected. We check the boxes. We keep going. But over time, something inside starts to ache. It’s faint at first. Easy to ignore. We call it ‘normal’.
 Continue reading “Is numbness our new normal?” →