Showing posts with label Medical Doctor (MD). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medical Doctor (MD). Show all posts

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

How patients and doctors can improve the primary care office visit

Consumer Reports recently released a survey of both patients and primary care doctors, regarding their perceptions of each other.

Some interesting findings, as summarized by the WSJ’s Health Blog:

On the issue of respect and appreciation, 70% of doctors said they were getting less of it from patients than when they started practicing. For patients, meantime, the more they reported being treated respectfully and listened to, the more satisfied they were with their physician.

Respect matters. Treating health professionals in a courteous manner definitely helps when receiving medical care. On the flip side, physicians also need to respect patents, as it positively impacts patient satisfaction.  Both parties need to improve in this area.

Doctors said insurance paperwork topped their list of things that interfere with their ability to provide the best possible care. Financial pressure was No. 2.

Click on the "Via" link to read the full article.

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Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

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Monday, February 28, 2011

Social Media - How to Use Social Media to Choose a Doctor

We patients have only a few tools at our disposal to choose the right doctor for us. Most of those tools provide very cut and dried basics like licensing, board certification, even malpractice.

It has always been difficult to gain a glimpse into a doctor's attitudes or personality without meeting that doctor and getting to know him or her. Friends might tell us a doctor is "nice" - but smart patients know that doesn't mean a doctor is competent.

Along comes social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other programs online that allow us to connect with other people - including doctors. Social media allows us to learn more about a doctor's personality and attitudes, his or her approach to their work and more.

With a little detective work, picking up clues here and there, smart patients use social medial to help them research and choose their doctors.

Some might tell you that you can get this kind of information from doctors' ratings sites. But I'm not a fan. They are too restricted, and are too often populated only by disgruntled patients. So give social media a try, hopefully to find more balance.

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

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******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

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Friday, February 11, 2011

Balancing infection control with the patient experience, KevinMD.com

by Kevin Pho, MD

Hospitals have recently been stepping up their infection control procedures, in the wake of news about iatrogenic infections afflicting patients when they are admitted.

Doctors are increasingly wearing a variety of protective garb — gowns, gloves and masks — while seeing patients.

In an interesting New York Times column, Pauline Chen wonders how this affects the doctor-patient relationship.

She cites a study from the Annals of Family Medicine, which concluded that,

fear of contagion among physicians, studies have shown, can compromise the quality of care delivered. When compared with patients not in isolation, those individuals on contact precautions have fewer interactions with clinicians, more delays in care, decreased satisfaction and greater incidences of depression and anxiety. These differences translate into more noninfectious complications like falls and pressure ulcers and an increase of as much at 100 percent in the overall incidence of adverse events.

Hospitals are in a no-win situation here. On one hand, they have to do all they can to minimize the risk of healthcare-acquired infections, but on the other, doctors need to strive for a closer bond with patients — which protective garb sometimes can impede.

More research is clearly needed to determine how much protection is actually needed to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

For instance, Dr. Chen cites studies where,

researchers at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond found that the rate of infection was identical whether health care workers wore gowns and gloves with only the patients in isolation or whether they wore only gloves with all patients.

So there’s some evidence that being overly protective may not necessarily help.

The key is finding the right balance between infection control and preserving the physician-patient relationship. With rapidly advancing, and sometimes impersonal, technology, combined with the legitimate fear of hospital-acquired contagion, it’s easy to forget about the patient experience during their hospital stay.

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Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Hello Doctor! (Can I Call You M.D.?) - Health Blog - WSJ

The medical profession feels like it is under siege. The traditional MD trained, post residency doctor was trusted and looked up to as a pillar of knowledge and achievement.
In a vast array of ways there have been efforts to dislodge these professionals from their perch. Obfuscation of roles, privilege creep, payer acceptance, degree inflation, DTC advertising along with mid-level focused detailing(generally more corruptible), push of “universal health care”, push of generic terminology such as “providers” used in ways to commoditize then devalue the services. The push of EHR and protocol driven care, etc are all parts of the efforts to this end.
The problem is that this is leading to fall in standards, unfortunately not just in affiliated providers but even amongst MDs in my observation over the years. The approach of younger doctors appears to be that “if I am merely a provider I will just show that level of commitment” . Many no longer take out of hours call. They choose lifestyle specialties, prefer shift work, generally refuse anything more than minimal responsibility etc.
The old guard is aging and as they are phased out, the true unfortunate ramifications of this will become clear. We are being very short sighted undercutting such a venerable profession in such ways.

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******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
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