Christina Laun at RN Central has made a helpful list: 25 Tips to Help Protect Yourself from Medical Errors. Reading the entire list is a good idea. But many of the items on the list can be boiled down to two principles: 1) be an active participant, and 2) don’t be afraid to seem entitled….
Continue ReadingArchives for April 2008
The Art of Pain
Pain is a tricky medical problem because it’s impossible to measure or adequately communicate to another person. Tara Parker-Pope discusses how patients in pain use art to describe what they’re going through: Sacramento resident Mark Collen, 47, is a former insurance salesman who suffers from chronic back pain. After his regular doctor retired due to….
Continue ReadingFDA Identifies Heparin Contaminant
Federal officials have identified the contaminant that was found in the blood-thinning medication heparin in 11 countries. Chinese officials have denied that this contaminant has caused any deaths. As for U.S. officials, here is what one of them says: Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug center, said that German regulators….
Continue ReadingCalifornia Orders Insurers to Reinstate Policies
In California, regulators ordered insurers to reinstate the policies of 26 patients who allegedly lied on their applications. As Michelle Andrews notes in the linked article, insurers will often claim that a patient “lied” about something that was either an honest mistake or the result of the insurer using strange definitions. For instance: …one woman….
Continue ReadingDoctors, Research and Industry Money
The New York Times has an interesting article about the recent decision of some scientists to refuse payments from the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. From the article: No longer will they be paid for speaking at meetings or for sitting on advisory boards. They may still work with companies. It is important, they say,….
Continue ReadingGoogle, Medical Records and Privacy
Tara Parker-Pope has an article on the privacy implications of big companies like Microsoft and Google entering the medical records storage business. We have discussed this issue before, stressing the importance of patients needing convenient access to all of their medical records. Parker-Pope, however, discusses a potential downside to this development: a loss of privacy….
Continue ReadingStudy: Patients Feel Uncomfortable Asking Doctors about Hand-washing
Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times reports on a study by British researchers investigating what questions patients felt comfortable asking their doctors. Questions that did not imply anything about the doctor’s preparation or experience or authority were easy to ask–for example, questions about length of stay, or details about how a procedure worked. However,….
Continue ReadingNew Study: Patients Dissatisfied with Hospitals
A new survey on patients’ opinions on their hospital stays has some disturbing results: Many patients reported that they had not been treated with courtesy and respect by doctors and nurses; that they had not received adequate pain medication after surgery; and that they did not understand the instructions they received when discharged from the….
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