MedWorm Tags: healthcare decisions

Spanish Physicians Take Heed: Social Media Influences Healthcare Decision-Making

Better Health — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:00:11 +0100

The Spanish Twitter chapter of #hcsmeu (hashtag #hcsmeuES) held its first unconference on April 1st in Barcelona. For many it sounds like a convention of freakish fans of some cult science-fiction TV show (a group I’m also part of, by the way). But its actually a group of about 200 healthcare professionals from all over Spain who share their interest in social networks and their influence in this particular industry. Many of those present were meeting face to face for the first time but all of them had previously been gathering weekly on Twitter for a one-hour discussion about the relationship between physicians, pharma, patients and ICT, just as other groups across Europe. Nowadays even the most reactionary guy admits that both new technological advances and social networking are changi...

Narrative Medicine: Healing Through Storytelling

Better Health — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:00:32 +0100

More in the evolving meme of narrative medicine: Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (my alma mater) have found that for a select population of individuals, listening to personal narratives helps control blood pressure. While the power of stories is old news, the connection to clinical outcomes is what’s newsworthy here. Read Dr. Pauline Chen’s nice piece in the New York Times. The implications for ongoing work in this area are mind boggling. The Annals of Internal Medicine study authors sum it up nicely: Emerging evidence suggests that storytelling, or narrative communication, may offer a unique opportunity to promote evidence-based choices in a culturally appropriate context. Stories can help listeners make meaning of their lives, and listeners may be in...

How To Have A Pain-Free Hospital Stay

Better Health — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:00:55 +0100

This is a guest post from Dr. Anita Gupta. ********** How To Have A Pain-Free Hospital Stay Too often patients feel like they’re in the passenger seat when entering the hospital. Even in the best of circumstances — such as planned admissions — patients often don’t feel in control of their own care. One of the most unnecessary issues facing patients when they enter the hospital is untreated (or undertreated) pain. Often the focus of the medical team is to treat a condition, and controlling a patient’s pain comes second. Fortunately, this doesn’t need to be the situation. Here are a few tips for patients to ensure that their pain does not go overlooked: – Let someone know if you are in pain. This may seem obvious, but patients often hesitate to question their doctor...

Practice Variation: Essential To e-Patient Awareness

Better Health — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:00:02 +0100

This is the first of the follow-up posts I hope to write from participating in the Salzburg Global Seminar titled “The Greatest Untapped Resource in Healthcare? Informing and Involving Patients in Decisions about Their Medical Care.” One of our purposes on this site is to help people develop e-patient skills, so they can be more effectively engaged in their care. One aspect is shared decision making, which we wrote about in September. A related topic, from August, is understanding the challenges of pathology and diagnosis. Both posts teach about being better informed partners for our healthcare professionals. I’ve recently learned of an another topic, which I’m sure many of you know: Practice variation. This is a big subject, and I’ll have several posts about it. It’s complex, ...

Becoming A Savvy Healthcare Consumer: A “Difficult Science”

Better Health — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:00:30 +0100

Dr. Kent Bottles is in the midst of a very thoughtful multi-part blog post under the heading, “The Difficult Science Behind Becoming a Savvy Healthcare Consumer.” Part I examined “the limitations of science in helping us make wise choices and decisions about our health.” Part II explores “how we all have to change if we are to live wisely in a time of rapid transformation of the American healthcare system that everyone agrees needs to decrease per-capita cost and increase quality.” Both parts so far have addressed important issues about news media coverage of healthcare. (more…) *This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog* (Source: Better Health)

Why Privatizing Medicare Is Highly Explosive

Better Health — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:00:00 +0100

In response to my recent post where I averred that the cigarette companies were treated as scapegoats, I have had several cyber and actual conversations about personal responsibility. I believe that folks should realize the consequences and the benefits of freely-made decisions. While we want American society to be compassionate, we do not want to punish success and reward failure. Our goal is to do all that we can to maximize everyone’s success. We should be ready to assist those who need and deserve our private and governmental assistance, but personal effort and responsibility are necessary elements of these interventions. In our gastrroenterology practice, when we see patients who are in financial difficulty, my physician partners and staff will do all that we can to help them. While...

Lung Cancer CT Scan Marketing Spreads Across The Country

Better Health — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:00:34 +0100

Last week, after the National Lung Screening Trial results were released, David Sampson, American Cancer Society director of medical and scientific communications, wrote that “our greatest fear was that forces with an economic interest in the test would sidestep the scientific process and use the release of the data to start promoting CT scans. Frankly, even we are surprised how quickly that has happened.” And, yes, the marketing has even hit fly-over country in the Twin Cities, with this ad appearing in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune in the “A” section: Of course, no where in the ad will you read about the potential harms of such scans, the false positive rate, what happens when you get a false positive (unnecessary followup testing and perhaps unnecessary t...

The Weekly Scoop in Healthcare Social Media #36

Fox ePractice — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:40:19 +0100

This article addresses how much time users spend on Facebook, the effectiveness of Facebook ads and trends among online merchants. Read the report… // < ![CDATA[ new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'profile', rpp: 2, interval: 6000, width: 250, height: 250, theme: { shell: { background: '#e4eff2', color: '#007e9a' }, tweets: { background: '#FBFBFB', color: '#595959', links: '#007e9a' } }, features: { scrollbar: false, loop: false, live: false, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: false, behavior: 'all' } }).render().setUser('amyporterfield').start(); // ]]> This Week’s The Chair of Cheer “The Chair of Cheer” is our pick of the week display of great social media execution in the healthcare industry. ...

Doctors Wanted For Hazardous Journey

Better Health — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:38 +0100

“MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.” With this want ad, circa 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton recruited 28 souls with an unimaginable challenge: To cross the unexplored Antarctica on dogsled. The polar explorer knew exactly what human characteristics he needed to pull off such a feat and understood that straight talk would resonate with a few select men. Shakleton and his crew boarded their ship, the “Endurance,” and sailed the world’s most dangerous oceans straight into harms way — still considered one of the world’s greatest survival stories. Amazingly, all men survived against unimaginable odds. Their story reminds us that we a...

A “Decision Tree” For Personalized Medicine

Better Health — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:00:09 +0100

What’s amazing is that despite the vocal movement to empower patients, no one has put together a well-referenced, readable book to help patients understand how they should use personalized medicine to influence their health — until now. Enter The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine (Rodale 2010), something of a blueprint of patient liberation written by Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired magazine. It offers constructive narrative not only about the importance of the decisions we make but how to apply the concept of an old-fashioned decision tree in making those decisions. (more…) *This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts* (Source: Better Health)

Internet has more influence on healthcare decisions than other mediums

ePharma Summit — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:29:00 +0100

(Source: ePharma Summit)