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”
Way back in 1847, the American Medical Association panel on ethics decreed that “the patient should obey the physician.”
There may very well be physicians today – in the era of empowered patients and patient-centred care and those darned Medical Googlers – who glance nostalgically backwards at those good old days.
Let’s consider, for example, the simple clinical interaction of prescribing medication. If you reliably take the daily meds that your doctor has prescribed for your high blood pressure, you’ll feel fine. But if you stop taking your medication, you’ll still feel fine. At least, until you suffer a stroke or heart attack or any number of consequences that have been linked to untreated hypertension.
Those who do obediently take their meds are what doctors call “compliant”. And, oh. Have I mentioned how much many patients like me hate that word?
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I went on an adventure to a magical, faraway place. It was my second visit to the world-famous Mayo Clinic in beautiful downtown Rochester, Minnesota. My first trip there was back in 2008, five months after surviving a misdiagnosed widow-maker heart attack.
I was there that first time because I had applied (and was accepted) to attend the annual WomenHeart Science and Leadership Symposium for Women With Heart Disease at Mayo Clinic – the first Canadian ever invited to attend. This is a training program that arms its graduates with the knowledge, skills and (most of all!) Mayo’s international street cred to help us become community educators for other women when we go back to our hometowns.
Thus, a circle that began with me sitting in that 2008 training audience of 45 women (ages 31-71, all of us heart patients) was completed on my second trip as I became one of the presenters onstage – this time in front of an audience of cardiologists! – at a Mayo Clinic medical conference on Heart Disease in Women (Thank you Drs. Hayes, Mulvagh and Gulati for your persistent invitations!) But long before I took the stage that weekend, I’d been invited to come to Rochester a day earlier to meet with some pretty amazing Mayo staff. Continue reading “How Minimally Disruptive Medicine is happily disrupting health care”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
There are patients. And then there are patients. Let’s consider, for example, two friends of about the same age, same height, same size, same socioeconomic demographic – each one (in an amazingly freakish coincidence) a survivor of a similarly severe heart attack, admitted to the same hospital on the same day. Let’s call these two made-up examples Betty (Patient A) and Boop (Patient B).
Betty is diagnosed promptly in mid-heart attack, treated appropriately, recovers well, suffers very little if any lasting heart muscle damage, completes a program of supervised cardiac rehabilitation, is surrounded by supportive family and friends, and is happily back at work and hosting Sunday dinners after just a few short weeks of recuperation.
Boop, on the other hand, experiences complications during her hospitalization, recuperation takes far longer than expected, her physician fails to refer her to cardiac rehabilitation, she has little support at home from family, her cardiac symptoms worsen, repeat procedures are required, she suffers longterm debilitating consequences, and is never able to return to work.
Yet despite these profound differences, physicians would still describe both of these women with the same all-inclusive descriptor, “myocardial infarction” (heart attack). Continue reading “Which patients does the “patient voice” represent?”
Heart Sisters 