patient advocacy Archives

Troubleshooter

Patrick Sammons August 21, 2020 9 Comments

As a third-year medical student midway through a family-medicine rotation, I’m supervised by a family physician in several free clinics in our large city.

On Fridays, we run a clinic for torture victims who’ve left their home countries to seek asylum in the US. I’ve been following a new patient, Julian, an African refugee.

Julian is a small, thin man in his early thirties. His large eyes, shy smile and soft voice belie the determination and resilience evident in his story.

Concierge Care

Deborah Pierce December 20, 2013 31 Comments

Deborah Pierce

I am a family physician. Like most of my colleagues, though, I must sometimes step out of the comfort of my clinical role to take on the role of patient or family caregiver.

Generally, these trips to the other side of the exam table inspire a fair amount of anxiety.

During visits to the doctor, I find myself noticing many details and comparing the quality of care to that in my own practice. I worry about how the doctor will relate to me–will I be viewed as a knowledgeable colleague, or as someone who knows relatively little? Will my background be treated with respect? Will my needs as a patient or caregiver be acknowledged? The uncertainty eases only when the physician wins my

Imagine

Linda Koebner November 8, 2013 18 Comments

Linda Koebner

“Her vitals are fine,” the nurse told Besarta’s mother during a rare visit to the family’s basement apartment in the Bronx.

Besarta’s mind is also fine–sharp and clear. She asked me to use her real name in this story.

Her twenty-five-year-old face is beautiful and flawless, despite the howls of frustration, rage and pain she directs at her family, at fate and especially at Friedreich’s ataxia, the disease that controls her.

When I come for our weekly visit, Besarta’s blue-green eyes smile at me from where she sits in her wheelchair. Then her head suddenly wobbles sideways. Her face smashes against the chair’s headrest–first the right side, then the left.

Saving My Appendix

Andrew Gray September 6, 2013 No Comments

Andrew T. Gray

The doctor was adamant. “This is America, not Sweden,” he told me. “We operate.”

How did this happen to me? I wondered, looking at him across the ER exam room. How could I, a healthcare provider, not have insurance?

I had woken up that morning with a mildly upset stomach. Nonetheless, I’d gone to my job (begun only six weeks earlier) as a physician assistant at a Beverly Hills HIV clinic. I’d seen patients until lunchtime, then attended a research meeting. The subject was a study of irritable bowel syndrome.

“I need to be in this study,” I joked to a coworker. “My IBS is acting up.”

I don’t have IBS, but I was indeed having crampy stomach pain. I continued to see patients

What to Say When You’re Terminal

Ellen Diamond May 3, 2013 No Comments

Ellen Diamond

For the past fifteen years, I have had an incurable form of leukemia.

Such diseases used to be called terminal illnesses, but we don’t hear that term as much anymore. With all the new drugs and treatments available, doctors have become more reluctant to refer to diseases they can’t cure yet as “terminal.”

In the years just after my diagnosis, when friends and family would ask what could be done for it, I used to say that nothing could be done, adding: “It’s terminal.”

I was trying to be honest, to say, “Come now, we must face this.” People’s reactions of shock and sadness, though, made me wish I’d put it some other way. But what other way?

My father,

Lost and Found

Julie Evans January 18, 2013 No Comments

Julie Evans

When Mom died of alcohol poisoning on her sixtieth birthday, I was seventeen and then I didn’t have a mom anymore.

My heart was crushed, but there was no time to grieve, because my dad was dying. A man in his late fifties, he’d battled emphysema, a brain aneurysm, colon cancer and then bone-marrow cancer.

Over the following months, and after starting my first year at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, I’d pace the halls of St. Mary’s Hospital as Dad met with the doctors or had his lungs suctioned out. With no health insurance, and no hope of improvement, he was eventually moved to a

What About Bob?

Joseph Fennelly June 22, 2012 No Comments

Joseph Fennelly

The time: early one morning, thirty years ago.

The place: my local hospital.

At this point, I have been an internist for twenty years. I’ve just entered the cardiac care unit, where my patient Bob, a ninety-five-year-old man with advanced senility, has been brought because he’s having chest pain.

As I step through the door, Bob codes. The young residents and staff swing into action, rushing the crash cart over to his bed.

Quickly, I jump between them and Bob.

“Don’t resuscitate him!” I shout.

Looking stunned, they eye me as I stand there with folded arms, making myself into a human shield.

Bob lies motionless, not

Stigmata

Kevin Koo October 14, 2011 No Comments

I started my third year of medical school as a surgery clerk.

With this eight-week clerkship came a flood of conflicting advice from older, wiser peers: “Ask a lot of questions, but speak only when spoken to.” “Offer to help, but stay out of the way.” “Be friendly and likeable, but not too friendly–or too likeable.” For the medical student, such is the mystique of the OR.

Three weeks into my general surgery rotation, I was helping my senior resident to see patients in the clinic and evaluate them for surgery. She grabbed the first chart off the day’s pile, knocked on the exam-room door and turned the handle, glancing at the chart before saying, “Hello, Mister–”

“Tran,” the patient finished.

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: patient advocacy

Troubleshooter

Concierge Care

Imagine

Saving My Appendix

What to Say When You’re Terminal

Lost and Found

What About Bob?

Stigmata

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: patient advocacy

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