Tag: WPLongform

When doctors use words that hurt

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Consider hearing the scary diagnosis of “heart failure” tripping lightly from your doctor’s lips as if it were no big deal. Can there be anything more terrifying and demoralizing than hearing that your heart is “failing”?  And the words don’t even  accurately reflect this condition, which actually means that your heart is not pumping blood as well as it should. 

So why did doctors come up with this heart failure name, and what on earth were they thinking when they decided it would be a good idea to actually say these words out loud to Real Live Patients? And is there a less hurtful term they could use instead?   Continue reading “When doctors use words that hurt” →

Yentl Syndrome: cardiology’s gender gap is alive and well

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

There’s a big fat yawning gap between cardiovascular diagnostic tests and resulting medical treatments – depending on whether doctors are looking at a male or a female patient lying there on the gurney. I’ve been saying this out loud ever since I came home from Mayo Clinic, where I first learned about the gender gap from Mayo cardiologists following my own heart attack misdiagnosis.

When asked if we might need to develop a new set of diagnostic/treatment protocol guidelines to specifically address this gap, Dr. Sharonne Hayes (founder of the Mayo Women’s Heart Clinic) responded:

“Part of the problem now is that the clinical practice guidelines are less likely to be applied to women compared to men.

“We know that when hospitals have systems in place to ensure they do provide care according to the guidelines, women’s outcomes improve.”

You may be wondering what it will take to put into place systems and guidelines (already used in male patients) for all patients, including women – in order to finally close that gender gap for good.  Continue reading “Yentl Syndrome: cardiology’s gender gap is alive and well” →

‘Healthy Privilege’ – when you just can’t imagine being sick

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 43 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

Have you had the experience of knowing something intuitively, but without realizing that the thing you know already has a name?  For example, have you ever found yourself limping along on the losing end of an argument, yet  only much later (when it was far too late!) you suddenly thought of just the perfectly witty retort that you should have come up with? 

There’s a name for that. The French call this ‘l’esprit d’escalier’, literally “the wit of the staircase”.  You’re welcome.

Similarly, I’ve been writing for some time about my niggling frustration over something else that I didn’t even realize had an actual name.  Continue reading “‘Healthy Privilege’ – when you just can’t imagine being sick” →

Patient engagement? How about doctor engagement?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

It’s a stressful time to be a patient these days, what with expectations running high that we should be both empowered and engaged while self-tracking every trackable health indicator possible – and of course retaining an all-important positive mental attitude – in order to change health care forever. 

Whew. I had to go have a wee lie-down just thinking about how big that responsibility may seem on days when we patients are feeling, yes, sick –  as an annoyingly significant number of patients living with a chronic and progressive illness tend to feel on any given day. That’s why we’re sometimes called “patients”.   Continue reading “Patient engagement? How about doctor engagement?” →