Trisha Torrey – Heart Sisters

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters

angry-mob I watched a man recently telling the story of how he’d been “fired” by his cardiologist. All he had done to deserve this, he explained, was to use the f-word during a confrontation with the office receptionist. He complained that he’d been subsequently fired after this receptionist reported his outburst to her boss. He specifically blamed the terms of a recently implemented anti-bullying policy at the medical facility. Because of this stupid receptionist and this anti-bullying policy, he was now stuck in the unenviable state of being without a cardiologist.

No. No. And NO! It was his own decision to behave badly that accomplished that result for him. Not surprisingly, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare staff are fed up with bullies like That Guy, who act as if being a patient means you get a free pass to be a jerk.

It does not mean that at all – and I don’t care how sick you are. Continue reading “Being sick doesn’t excuse being a jerk” →

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters ♥ 2nd in a 3-part series:

This may come as a shock to health care professionals, particularly to the ones who cringe when their patients bring in health information they found via Dr. Google. But it turns out that the accuracy of information found on online patient support groups is actually surprisingly reliable. For example, the British Medical Journal reported that most false or misleading statements in online patient groups are in fact rapidly corrected by other participants in subsequent postings. And there aren’t many of these false or misleading statements. The journal published an interesting study that found only 10 of 4,600 online patient group postings studied (that’s just 0.22%) were actually found to be false or misleading. But of these, seven were identified as such by other site participants and corrected within an average of four hours and 33 minutes.(1)

Continue reading “Online patient groups: why so under-used?” →