A safety checklist for patients

From the 15 March 2012 posting at The Health Care Blog

Far too many patients are harmed rather than helped from their interactions with the health care system. While reducing this harm has proven to be devilishly difficult, we have found that checklists help. Checklists help to reduce ambiguity about what to do, to prioritize what is most important, and to clarify the behaviors that are most helpful.
The use of checklists helped to reduce central-line associated bloodstream infections at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, in hospitals throughout Michigan, and now across the United States. Clinicians have begun to develop, implement and evaluate checklists for a variety of other diagnoses and procedures.
Patients can also use checklists to defend themselves against the major causes of preventable harm. Here are a few you can use:

The posting goes on to include short checklists for use in hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices.

To help reduce harm, clinicians must partner with patients and families.  Patients can use this checklist, as well as the information and tools listed below, to help keep them safe.
20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
Don’t Become the Victim of a Surgical Error (CNN)
Medical Errors: Tips to Help Prevent Them (American Academy of Family Physicians)
My Health Notebook (Johns Hopkins Medicine)
Patient Handbook (Johns Hopkins Hospital)
Patient Safety Video (Johns Hopkins Hospital)
Patient Safety Checklists (Campaign Zero: Families for Patient Safety)
Taking Charge of Your Healthcare (Consumers Advancing Patient Safety)

Related articles

• The Patient’s Checklist by Elizabeth Bailey (asourparentsage.net)
• Survive your hospital stay with patient checklist (msnbc.msn.com)
• Patient Safety Week 2012: How Do We Make A Difference? (hcfama.org)
• Patient Safety Awareness Week (medicineandtechnology.com)

Unregulated supplements are a tragedy

Calcium dietary supplement tablets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the 3 March 2012 KevinMD.com article by GEORGE LUNDBERG, MD AND GILBERT ROSS, MD

The latest supplement toxic alert thankfully involves only two young soldiers who died suddenly, both reported to have the unregulated amphetamine-like dimethylamylamine, DMAA, aka “Jack3d” and “OxyelitePro,” as the suspected death-dealing toxicant.

Who knows how many other unexplained deaths and near-deaths can be attributed to the vast experiment foisted upon an unwary American populace by such drugs — I mean, “supplements”?

Thanks to 1994′s Hatch Act, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), pushed through Congress and released upon a then-unprotesting public by Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), substances which may be benign, toxic, and everything in between, as long as they are sold as “dietary nutritional supplements,” get a virtual free pass…

…We Americans, so concerned about minute amounts of this or that chemical in our food and water, and ready to challenge our board-certified internist on treatment decisions, gobble down supplements with alarming obliviousness to their potential dangers and denial of the overwhelming absence of evidence of benefit.

A “Perspective” article in a recent New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Pieter Cohen called for a tightening — no, not even that, merely actually enforcing the law as written — by having the FDA demand that, instead of pleading with, the supplement manufacturers supply the agency with at least the legal minimum of data on their products’ safety.

Some have responded with protests over “Big Government” intervention.

One of these days some supplement, contaminated or virginal, will kill a bunch of naive customers, and cries will ring out over their lax regulation.

Responsible public health authorities should effect long overdue legal and regulatory control over this millions-strong, uncontrolled experiment before such a tragedy forces their hands.

Related Resources

• Drugs, Supplements, and Herbal Information (MedlinePlus)

  Learn about your prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines. Includes side effects, dosage, special precautions, and more.Browse dietary supplements and herbal remedies to learn about their effectiveness, usual dosage, and drug interactions.

• Dietary Supplements Labels Database 

  Information about label ingredients in more than 6,000 selected brands of dietary supplements. It enables users to compare label ingredients in different brands. Information is also provided on the “structure/function” claims made by manufacturers.

  These claims by manufacturers have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Companies may not market as dietary supplements any products that are intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Related articles

• US Pharmaceuticals Produced in Unregulated Chinese Factories (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• Dietary Supplements Extensively Regulated, Say Authors of New Article (prnewswire.com)
• The FDA has it dead wrong (thehill.com)
• Army Studies Workout Supplements After 2 Deaths (nytimes.com)

Some questionable medical marketing practices via HealthNewsReview.org

A laparoscopic robotic surgery machine. Patient-side cart of the da Vinci surgical system. Into the sealed Computer God Robot Operating Cabinet, as a Frankenstein slave, at night. Da Vinci Surgical System. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The editors at HealthNewsReview.org don’t usually have weekly themes when they review health news. However, in this past week they noticed several of them covered questionable medical marketing practices.

These reports included

• Urologists sell vasectomies tied to March Madness & The Masters 

One pitch states “This is a good time to have it done so you can recover while spending a couple of days on the couch watching hoops with your wife’s approval.”

The editor soberly concludes that “more players in the health care field have learned that lesson and are acting on it all the time – “with appropriate marketing” you can make almost anything a trend.  Full body CT scans…prostate cancer screenings in mobile vans….Botox parties…

• Latest example in how hospitals promote robotic surgery: “tasteless” says one journalist 

The article outlines how robotic surgery is touted as a great way to quickly recover from surgery so one can resume daily graveside visits to a recently lost spouse.

• Plastic surgeon with nose for news has PR, YouTube video, and now – ethics investigation

  Some journalists recently received this news release: Miami Plastic surgeon –“Dr. Schnoz” offering a nose job, trip to Miami to the winner of a video contest March 8, 2012 – Dr. Michael Salzhauer, leading Miami Plastic Surgeon at Bal Harbour PlasticSurgery Associates, announced today “A Nose Job Love Song Giveaway.” Dr. Salzhauer’s contest involves creating [...]

   

Related articles

• [Reblog] How hospitals recoup the cost of buying robotic surgery systems (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• What Doctors Don’t Know & Journalists Don’t Convey About Screening May Harm Patients (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Men’s hopes for robot prostate surgery unrealistic: Study (vancouversun.com)
• The Bottom Line (thehealthcareblog.com)
• Why isn’t everyone excited about robotic assisted surgery? (kevinmd.com)
• Mass. clinic offers free pizza for vasectomy during March Madness (cbsnews.com)