Tag Archives: medical advice

How to Survive Medical Care

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A guy walks into the doctor’s office …

While there has been little to laugh about in the healthcare debate, it has caused a spike in jokes on late night television and the Internet.  Gallows humor, you might say.  But here’s something you should know about that is no laughing matter: getting sick (or sicker) as the result of medical treatment, aka iatrogenic illness, is on the rise.  In 2000, a presidential task force labeled medical errors a ‘national problem of epidemic proportions,’ and put the cost at $29 billion annually. The Institute of Medicine’s report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, released the same year concludes errors during hospitalization kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year.

Then there is the problem of antibiotic resistance caused by “inappropriate or improper use of antibiotics by physicians,” according to Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and diagnostic immunology at NYU Medical Center. Dr Tierno finds that of the 90 million prescriptions written for antibiotics, “50 million are absolutely unnecessary or inappropriate.”  Could be why antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA) is a major problem for hospitals.

So how can you protect yourself?  Short of taking the approach of a friend of ours who steers clear of hospitals and doctors entirely, you can do two things.  1. Make self-care and preserving your health a top priority, and 2. If you need medical care and/or are hospitalized, resist becoming “a passive, dependent, childlike person who will not question or oppose authority,” says Lawrence LeShan, Ph.D., psychologist, author and pioneer in the psychotherapy of cancer support.

Here are more tips adapted from How to Survive in a Hospital from Dr. LeShan:

Have a friend or relative who can be your advocate (or be an advocate for your hospitalized elder).  An advocate is someone who is not afraid to make a fuss and ask difficult questions.  For example:

  • Who is the physician overall in charge of the case?  Make sure that there is someone who has an overview of the patient and the symptoms.
  • What is the diagnosis, and how certain of it is the physician?
  • What is the usual course of the disease, both with and without therapy?
  • What are the side effects of the therapy?
  • What alternatives exist?

When tests are prescribed, it will be important to know how painful they will be, what side effects they will have, and most important – whether they will make a difference. Will the physician’s course of action change depending on the results of the test(s)? If not, there is no reason to proceed.

More information:

Kimberly-Clark Health Care’s website on Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) http://www.haiwatchnews.com/
American Iatrogenic Association

Getting Hip Via the Internet

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Symptoms are God’s way of telling us that we need to pay attention to our bodies.  So when Howard began to experience severe pain and weakness in his lower back, he immediately sought medical help.  He went from one specialist to another, was prescribed painkillers and physical therapy, which helped some, but the problem didn’t clear up.  Then our own general practitioner, an MD and homeopathic physician, came up with the correct diagnosis: It’s your hips. It made perfect sense: he was 72; he had been athletic most of his life, a tennis player and runner, both of which are notoriously hard on the hip joints.

The next step will be familiar to many of you: Howard turned to the Internet to research hip replacement options.  Some 122 million Americans — 56% of the population — are doing just that, according to a Center for Studying Health System Change report.  And while the so-called ‘elderly’ 65 and older trail their younger counterparts in using the Internet to seek advice on their health, this remains one of the fastest growing categories of Internet use.  Take Web MD, for example (we do!), which has a handy symptom checker that can either compel you to seek immediate medical advice if your symptoms are not worrisome enough in themselves, or calm you down enough to think clearly.  As a smart person of a certain age, you don’t need a professional to recognize that chest pain, shortness of breath and/or dizziness require emergency response.

Howard’s story has a good outcome.  He remembered having read that tennis star, Jimmy Connors, was back on the courts after having a hip replaced.  So he Googled “Jimmy Connors’s hip” and voila! Jimmy’s New Hip, a website with all the information he needed about the Wright CONSERVE Total Hip.  Intrigued, he next researched (using the Internet again) who in our area of South Florida was working with this hip replacement system  He discovered that a young surgeon named Vincent Fowble was regularly performing this surgery at Jupiter Medical Center.  Several appointments, consultations and X-Rays later, Howard was scheduled for the first of two hip replacement surgeries that have essentially gotten him back on the tennis court. Without the Internet, this would have taken longer, and cost him time and more pain.

You may have heard that some MDs look askance at self-diagnosing and, if you were to proceed to act on that information alone, you’re running a risk of getting it wrong.  Like I tell my yoga students, while yoga offers many health benefits, it is not intended as a substitute for competent medical advice.  Ditto, the Internet.