Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017-- photos/videos and all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. 

Prepared Patient Forum, What it Takes is the host for this week’s issue of Grand Rounds! You can read this week’s edition here. 

We received more than 40 contributions for this week’s collection of health care blogs and columns. Patients, clinicians, policy wonks and interesting folks with opinions submitted original posts that are sure to expand your thinking and perspectives. …..

On Calling the Shots, Beth Gainer takes issue with using terms such as “sexy” and “sassy” to describe the experience of having breast cancer.  As a breast cancer survivor, Beth understands the reality of the diagnosis, treatment and aftermath that left her feeling anything but sexy or sassy.

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Paul Levy, Not Running a hospital, on health care policy:  The Whac-A-Mole school of health care policy

Boy, if you ever needed a summary of how messed up our health care system is, check out this story by Robert Pear in the New York Times. Entitled, "Nursing Homes Seek Exemptions From Health Law," the essence is that nursing homes want to be exempt from the employer requirement to provide health care benefits to their staff because the payments nursing homes get from Medicare and Medicaid to deliver care to patients are too low to provide enough cash to those institutions to offer those benefits. …..

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A lovely post on humanity by Jordan, In My Humble Opinion:   I'm Coming Home

As the door opened the look on her face was undeniable. Grief. Pain. the tears rolled down her eyes. She let me into her small dorm room and hugged me. And then she told me that her grandmother was dead.

She was a mess. Her sadness was overwhelming. She sat on her bed in a stupor. And I sat with her. Holding her hand. Not saying a word. Just being…..

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Dr. Smak writes about what grief has taught her:  Reflections

………….Last week our moderator asked us to reflect on how we have changed, what we have learned, from our experience as a bereaved parent. There were several things mentioned, and much overlap as expected. These stood out for me:   …….

3. Finally, what I'm still struggling to learn: life goes on. Not his life, but everyone else's. …. As one father put it, "My other children are still growing up." …... I don't want to miss out twice. And I don't want her to miss out on having a present mom.
Being a bereaved parent hasn't made me a better person, but I'm different than I was.

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Shared on twitter (photo credit) by @dwescott1

RT @pbaniak: I must say, these photos are pretty cool: Rare albino robin spotted in Winchester: http://bit.ly/lqiLd5 cc: @GrrlScientist

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Brought to my attention via @MotherinMed and @enochchoi: Magic of the MD-patient relationship NYT: Our Health and the Luck of the Draw

Sometimes you hear stories from your patients that leave you staggered by the caprice of life. A young West African patient told me how his extended family had trudged through the forest on foot to escape rebels. He was 10 years old at the time. At one point in the journey, he had to urinate. He excused himself and retreated several feet into the bush. Moments later shots rang out. When he finally had the courage to crawl back out onto the path, he saw that his entire family had been killed in an ambush. …….

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I feel even more fortunate to have never been sued as I read the statistic “6 in 10 doctors are sued by the time they reach age 55, said a 2010 report by the American Medical Association.” This comes from the AmedNews article by Alicia Gallegos: Life after lawsuit: How doctors pick up the pieces

Before dawn, nearly every morning in the days leading to his trial, Stephen Lutz, MD, woke abruptly, his mind filled with thoughts of the looming witness stand.

He would spend the next few hours lying in the darkness, going over the case again and again.

"I awakened many mornings rehearsing what I would say to explain myself. It's almost as if I was giving testimony every morning at 4 a.m.," said Dr. Lutz, a radiation oncologist in Ohio who was sued in 2008.

Experts say such stress associated with a medical liability lawsuit manifests in different ways, often affecting all aspects of a physician's life. ……

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How cool would it be to go to a concert and be invited on stage?  Well, NPR tells the story of just that happening to Rayna at a Paul Simon concert:  Paul Simon And A Moment Of Pure Sobbing Joy

Paul Simon has brought joy to so many for so long, but on this night he made Rayna Ford's dream come true. During a show in Toronto on May 7, Rayna Ford, a fan from Newfoundland, called out for Simon to play "Duncan," and said something to the effect that she learned to play guitar on the song. In a moment of astonishment and disbelief, Paul Simon invited her on stage…...