Physician Communication « Surviving American Medicine

28 Oct

Have a Good Relationship with your Doctor and Improve your Medical Care

carypresant Doctors, Healthcare Reform, Physician Communication, Uncategorized 0 0

It is logical that having a good physician with whom you have a close relationship can improve your sense of confidence in your medical care. But does it result in improved outcomes?

In an important scientific article, K. Trevino and co-authors studied the relationship between young adults with advanced cancer and their physicians. In 95 young adults between the ages of 20 and 40 years old, who had advanced cancer, having a strong relationship with…

21 Oct

Have You had Your Genes Tested Yet?

carypresant Gene Testing, Physician Communication 0 0

Genetic predisposition to disease is very important. About one-third of all cancers are due to genetic predisposition. Also, about 10% of all cancers may have been caused by an abnormal gene for which doctors today have genetic tests available. Consequently, making certain that you get tests for a gene mutation that can cause cancer when you have a high family risk is important for you and your family.

In a recent article, C. Bellcross and…

25 Sep

Conversations between doctors and patients

carypresant Doctors, Physician Communication 0 0

Communication between physicians and patients is crucial to delivering high quality medical care. However, it is the experience of most patients that communicating with their physicians has become more difficult.

With healthcare reform, physicians often have less time to discuss things with their patients. An informational brochure may be handed out, or physicians may simply say, “talk to my nurses for more information.”

In a recent set of articles in the Journal of the American…

19 Aug

How Having a Good Relationship with Your Doctor Improves Your Medical Care.

carypresant Medical Tips, Physician Communication, psychosocial well-being, Uncategorized 0 0

It is logical that having a good physician with whom you have a close relationship can improve your sense of confidence in your medical care. But does it result in improved health care outcomes?

In an important scientific article, K. Trevino and co-authors studied the relationship between 95 young adults with advanced cancer and their physicians. In these young adults who were between 20 and 40 years old, having a strong relationship with the physician,…

15 Jul

How Long Should I Stay in a Hospital?

carypresant Hospitals, Medical Tips, Physician Communication 0 0

No one wants to be in a hospital, ever! But for many illnesses or accidents, hospitalization is needed. Lengths of hospital stays used to be very long, 7-14 days. But with the increased costs of health care in America, insurance companies, hospitals and physicians have taken steps to shorten the length of hospitalizations.

In a recent article, Dr. P. Kaoboli and coauthors studied how long patients were staying in VA hospitals (Annals of Internal Medicine,…

08 Jul

Diagnosing and Treating Fatigue

carypresant Fatigue, Health Care, Physician Communication 0 0

Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms in people. When fatigue is severe or constant, many doctors do not spend enough time trying to diagnose and treat the problem, leading to poor quality of life in the person suffering from weakness and lack of energy.

Here are some tips for getting to the cause and treating this common condition:

Ask your doctor to do a complete workup looking for all causes Suggest your doctor…

10 Jun

Know What to Expect from Your Treatments

carypresant elderly patients, Health Care, Physician Communication 0 0

You can develop potentially serious health conditions or illnesses. Good doctors develop excellent treatment plans for their patients, and you may get lots of information about tests, treatments and drugs you may need. But there is a possible problem in how you understand what the doctors and nurses tell you. In an excellent study http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204410 J. Weeks and coauthors evaluated over 1100 patients with serious diagnoses of cancer. Between 69% and 81% of the patients…

20 May

Using an Online Patient Portal Can Increase Your Healthcare

carypresant Electronic Medical Records, Physician Communication 2 0

Electronic medical records are becoming more common in doctor’s offices. One part of these software programs in some but not all electronic records is the online patient portal. These portals allow people to send messages to the doctor, get messages from the office, and review their tests and records.

It has been felt that use of these portals might make healthcare more efficient and reduce office visits, ultimately decreasing the costs of health care.

But…

29 Apr

Do You Want to Email Your Physician?

carypresant Electronic Medical Records, Physician Communication 0 0

The ease of using email communications is increasing the efficiency of many businesses, and our social lives as well. Many patients are emailing their physicians and the doctors are sending back answers.

But new regulations implementing 2 of our laws, HIPAA and HITECH privacy statutes, have now been finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services in January 2013.

These new rules indicate that it is a violation of the law for a physician…

13 Feb

TV Medical Shows Can Provide Topics to Discuss with Your Doctor

carypresant Doctors, Health Care, Medical Tips, Physician Communication 0 0

A friend who works as an actor in health dramas is also a patient and a caregiver for an ill parent. We discussed the relevance of TV depictions of medical care and real-life health care issues.

TV programs are presenting issues that people are dealing with every day. Although TV scripts tend to over-dramatize the emotional consequences of problems in medical care (e.g. too little time for doctors and nurses to provide adequate care, insensitivity…

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