Category: Health care

Pill splitting: which ones are safe to divide?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 30 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

pills-1173656_1280Physicians and other prescribers are often frustrated by their non-compliant patients. (Full disclosure: as I’ve written about here and here, for example, even the word non-compliant makes me cranky, as it sounds so much like it has punishment at the end of it). These frustrating patients are generally described as those who are not following doctor’s orders (there’s another patronizing term for you) or more specifically, are not taking the medications prescribed for them.

A Consumer Reports Health prescription drugs survey reported that many people are splitting their pills in half to save money on high-priced prescription drugs. The bad news, however, is that many have also learned to save even more money by taking half-doses of half-a-pill every other day. Continue reading “Pill splitting: which ones are safe to divide?” →

16 minutes that will change how you look at the “soul-crushing reality” of healthcare

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments
Mayo Clinic's Dr. Victor Montori at TEDx Zumbro River
       Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Victor Montori

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I felt like weeping with joy and hope by the end of this TEDx talk by Mayo Clinic’s visionary physician, Dr. Victor Montori. It’s about healing healthcare with kindness and caring.  This is nothing less than a patient revolution to address what he calls the “soul-crushing reality of a healthcare industry that has corrupted its own mission.” Continue reading “16 minutes that will change how you look at the “soul-crushing reality” of healthcare” →

Don’t take this personally, Doc…

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

modern-art-1127794_1280 copy Do you remember me telling you the story of my earliest signs of patient empowerment? That story was about the day I decided, at the feisty age of five, to fight back against our family doctor during his house call to our little bungalow on Pleasant Avenue.  My totally out-of-character childhood revolt was launched when I overheard Dr. Zaritsky tell my mother that he’d have to give me a needle to fix what was ailing me – and that he’d have to pull down my pajama bottoms to aim the needle just so into my bare bum. But I was having none of it, as I described here:

“I wept. I screamed. I struggled. I tried to run away from him. I think I may have even punched Dr. Zaritsky right in the stomach – until I finally ended up exhausted, sobbing and humiliated, face-down on the chesterfield, essentially calf-roped into submission by two exasperated adults.

“In hindsight, I’m indeed amazed that I actually somehow found it within my (very sick) little 5-year old spunky self to try to fight off a great big doctor who, in our home, was a man second only to Pope Pius XII in terms of authority and reverence.“

To speak or act so disrespectfully to the wonderful Dr. Zaritsky – or to any physician – would have been inexcusably bad behaviour in my family. But meanwhile, in a foreign country far, far away from Pleasant Avenue (i.e. in the United States of America), the stirrings of an even bigger patient revolution were simmering.  Continue reading “Don’t take this personally, Doc…” →

Why doctors say ‘Yes!’ when they really mean ‘No!’

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥   @HeartSisters

San Francisco physician Dr. Rahul Parikh wondered in a Salon column why some doctors have such a hard time saying the word “NO!” to their patients. For example:

“I periodically get requests from parents to prescribe cough medicine for their child that contains codeine. Besides the codeine, the drug contains alcohol, naturally leading to a better night’s sleep for child and, hence, the exhausted parent.

“But there’s no evidence that this cough medicine helps the child get better any faster, and it may even be dangerous.

“Should I prescribe it or not? The evidence says no, but to say that can lead to a confrontation with an angry parent.”   Continue reading “Why doctors say ‘Yes!’ when they really mean ‘No!’” →