by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Mistakes happen in medicine, just like in every other workplace. As intensive care physician and president of The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) Dr. Samantha Batt-Rawden reminded us in a BBC Newsnight interview:
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” If patients are looking for a doctor who has never made a mistake, they simply won‘t find one.”
Continue reading “Learn or Blame: when mistakes happen in medicine”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I li
ve on an island, so we’re often dependent on the ferries that carry islanders to the mainland and back. And because this is Canada’s west coast, high winds or rough seas can very occasionally cause sudden sailing delays or outright cancellations. When this happens, we often don’t know when sailings will resume, and nobody can tell us. Uncertainty like this about what daily life will bring includes both the routinely ordinary (what’s causing this traffic jam?) and the potentially important (when will my test results come in?) This state of uncertainty is what psychologists often call “cognitive dread”. . Continue reading “Cognitive dread: the painful uncertainty of waiting”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
A woman in one of my Heart-Smart Women presentation audiences told me about a conversation she overheard in our local Emergency Department, in which the physician said to the (male) patient in the bed next to hers:
“All of your cardiac tests came back ‘normal’, but we’re going to admit you for observation just to make sure it isn’t your heart.”
That story tells us that (unlike your average woman – i.e. me! – with cardiac symptoms alarming enough to propel her to seek emergency care, but unlucky enough to have tests that look “normal”), a man who shows up with both cardiac symptoms and “normal” test results does not need to fight to be believed. Continue reading “Why won’t doctors believe women?”
Heart Sisters 