Tag: Dr. Iona Heath

In medicine, the opposite of kindness is not cruelty. It’s dismissal.

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ❤️   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

When I recall moments of kindness I’ve encountered in my hospital experiences, two stand out. Both moments happened on May 6th, 2008 when I was finally admitted for what doctors call a “widow maker” heart attack. That was when the Emergency physician called in a cardiologist (something the Emerg doc two weeks earlier hadn’t done despite my alarming textbook  symptoms of central chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain down my left arm). On that awful earlier morning, a  man with the letters M.D. after his name told me clearly: “You’re in the right demographic for acid reflux!”  before sending me away.
 Continue reading “In medicine, the opposite of kindness is not cruelty. It’s dismissal.” →

Pain vs. suffering: why they’re not the same for patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 41 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

dont-forget-about-me-4225379_1280I’ve written a lot (here, here, and here, for example) about cardiac pain, because I live with cardiac pain called refractory angina due to a pesky post-heart attack diagnosis of coronary microvascular disease. This pain varies, but it hits almost every day, sometimes several episodes per day, and it can feel very much like the symptoms I experienced while busy surviving what doctors call the widow maker heart attack in 2008.

But there’s pain, and then there’s suffering. The two are not the same.

I spent many years working in the field of hospice palliative care, where we all learned the legendary Dame Cicely Saunders‘ definition of what she called “total pain”.(1)  This is the suffering that encompasses ALL of a person’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles. Although addressing total pain is an accepted component of providing good end-of-life care for the dying, the concept seems to be often ignored in cardiac care for the living. Continue reading “Pain vs. suffering: why they’re not the same for patients” →

Kindness in health care: missing in action?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 38 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters 

I don’t remember much of what happened during that fateful visit to the Emergency Department.  I remember the on-call cardiologist saying something to me about my “significant heart disease”. After hearing those words, I felt so stunned that – although I could see his lips moving and could hear sounds coming out of his mouth – he may as well have been speaking Swahili.  (Doctors, please remember this in the future when delivering life-altering diagnoses to your patients!)

What I do vividly remember, however, is a small but profound act of kindness later that day when I was brought to my bed in the CCU (the cardiac intensive care unit). Continue reading “Kindness in health care: missing in action?” →

Just not listening – or “narrative incompetence”?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

The Radical EarI’ve been reading lately about something called the patient’s narrative in medicine. Although it’s basically defined as patients telling the story of what originally brought them to see the doctor, it’s actually much more.

Doctors, for example, all too often may see “the story” as an unnecessarily lengthy distraction from getting swiftly to diagnosis and treatment.

But as U.K. physician Dr. Jeff Clark describes it, connecting with and understanding the patient requires a doctor to appreciate each person’s unique perspective. In the December 2008 issue of The British Journal of General Practice, he asked other doctors to consider how not listening to a patient’s story can be compared to his colleague’s golf game:  Continue reading “Just not listening – or “narrative incompetence”?” →