Health Educators, Foundations Announce Competencies And Action Strategies For Interprofessional Education

From the 12 May 2011 Medical News Today article

Two new reports released today by six national health professions associations and three private foundations recommend new competencies for interprofessional education in the health professions, and action strategies to implement them in institutions across the country. By establishing these competencies, the proponents believe our nation’s health care system can be transformed to provide collaborative, high-quality, and cost-effective care to better serve every patient.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Related articles

• Future of Nursing Campaign Upends Old Ideas on Health Care (rwjfblogs.typepad.com)
• Interprofessionalism (digitalcollaboration.wordpress.com)

Reluctance to Speak up Encourages Medical Errors

Reluctance to Speak up Encourages Medical Errors

From the March 22 2011 Health Day news item by Robert Preidt

TUESDAY, March 22 (HealthDay News) — Nurses often don’t speak up about incompetent colleagues or when they see fellow health-care workers making mistakes that could harm patients, new research finds.

In recent years, many hospitals have taken steps to reduce medical errors through measures such as checklists, patient handoff protocols, computerized order entry systems and automated medication-dispensing systems.

But the study***, which included 6,500 nurses and nurse managers across the United States, found that too often, nurses don’t alert their colleagues when they see a safety measure being violated…..

 

*** An executive summary of the study may be found here

[For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here]

 

Health Care Visits To Check More Than Just Health?

Health Care Visits To Check More Than Just Health?
Study Shows Health Care Providers Can Help with School Readiness During Primary Care Visits

From the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development Web page

It seems it’s never too early to start thinking about getting your child ready for school. From picture books to educational toys and videos, there’s no shortage of items and programs geared toward helping children to prepare to succeed in school.

But some children, especially those in at-risk families, don’t hear as many words and aren’t read-to on a regular basis; others don’t engage in skill-building play until they start preschool or kindergarten. By that time, researchers say, at-risk children already lag behind peers in school readiness skills. Finding earlier opportunities to intervene and to encourage school readiness and other skills could help to bridge the achievement gap between at-risk children and their peers who are not at risk.

Researchers’ efforts led them to a trusted resource for many families—the health care provider.

Including school readiness interventions in regular well-baby and well-child visits seems a natural fit for a number of reasons, such as:

• The visits occur frequently.
• Nearly all families attend the visits because of the immunizations and screenings required for child care and school settings.
• Parents often have close relationships with their children’s health care provider.
• The infrastructure for the visits and processes related to payment for visits is already in place.
• Conducting the interventions during regularly scheduled visits eliminates additional travel for the families…….

 

Related article

Understanding Fragile Families – More than 10 years of research reveals much about fragile families

 

Finding Low Cost Mental Health Care (written for teens)

Finding Low Cost Mental Health Care (written for teens)

From the Nemour Foundation Teen Health article

In addition to school counselors, these options were presented, as well as how to get help in a crisis, how to get financial assistance, what to do if you don’t want your parents to know you are seeking mental health help, and prescription assistance

• Local mental health centers and clinics. These groups are funded by federal and state governments so they charge less than you might pay a private therapist. Search online for “mental health services” and the name of the county or city where you live. Or, go to the website for the National Association of Free Clinics. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’Health Resources and Services Administration also provides a list of federally funded clinics by state.
  (Note: By clicking either of these links, you will be leaving the TeensHealth site.)

  One thing to keep in mind: Not every mental health clinic will fit your needs. Some might not work with people your age. For example, a clinic might specialize in veterans or kids with developmental disabilities. It’s still worth a call, though. Even if a clinic can’t help you, the people who work there might recommend someone who can.

• Hospitals. Call your local hospitals and ask what kinds of mental health services they offer — and at what price. Teaching hospitals, where doctors are trained, often provide low- or no-cost services.
• Colleges and universities. If a college in your area offers graduate degrees in psychology or social work, the students might run free or low-cost clinics as part of their training.
• On-campus health services. If you’re in college or about to start, find out what kind of counseling and therapy your school offers and at what cost. Ask if they offer financial assistance for students.
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). These free programs provide professional therapists to evaluate people for mental health conditions and offer short-term counseling. Not everyone has access to this benefit: EAPs are run through workplaces, so you (or your parents) need to work for an employer that offers this type of program.
• Private therapists. Ask trusted friends and adults who they’d recommend, then call to see if they offer a “sliding fee scale” (this means they charge based on how much you can afford to pay). Some psychologists even offer certain services for free, if necessary. You can find a therapist in your area by going to the website for your state’s psychological association or to the site for the American Psychological Association (APA). To qualify for low-cost services, you may need to prove financial need. If you still live at home, that could mean getting parents or guardians involved in filling out paperwork. But your therapist will keep everything confidential.

Additional Mental Health resources, especially for teens

• Teen Health – Your Mind has links to many articles written for teens in areas as Parents, Feeling Sad, Mental Health, Feelings and Emotions, Body Image, Families, Friends,  and Dealing with Problems
• Teen Mental Health (MedlinePlus) has links to Web pages about treatment, specific conditions (as cutting), patient handouts, and more

 

 

Uncertainty a huge source of anxiety in patients

From a December 3 Reuters Health news item by Fran Lowry

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (Reuters Health) – Uncertainty about a diagnosis causes more anxiety and can be more stressful than actually knowing that you have a serious illness, researchers reported here at the 2010 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

“Once people have the diagnosis, they gain some understanding and control, but without it, all they have is anxiety, and they do not know how to handle it,” Dr. Elvira V. Lang, from Harvard Medical School, Boston, told Reuters Health. “It is important for physicians and others who work in the health care field to realize this and find ways to alleviate this anxiety and stress. Not only will they help patients, they will also be helping their institutions to provide more cost effective care.”…

…

We were very surprised to see that the women having breast biopsy were significantly more anxious than the women who came for treatment for malignant cancer and those who came for fibroids,” Lang said in an interview.

Health care professionals tend not to be aware that diagnostic tests can be stressful, she added.

The researchers recognize that for a woman awaiting breast biopsy, the fear of being diagnosed with cancer and uncertainty about what the outcome will be can create higher anxiety levels than even those experienced by patients undergoing a “much riskier and invasive treatment of a known cancer.”

“People in health care and also family members may judge what is minor or major by how much risk is involved. But that is not what the patient is experiencing. That is why we want to alert them,” Lang said.

There are simple ways to diffuse this anxiety prior to procedures, she added. “People want to make patients feel better but they use language that is not helpful. For instance, they will say ‘oh, it’s not going to be that bad’, or ‘it’s just going to be a little sting’, but using such vocabulary only increases anxiety and pain.”

Training health care providers to use the right language with patients about to undergo diagnostic procedures will not only reduce their anxiety levels, it will also save the health care system money, Lang added.

“Sometimes patients are so anxious they can’t complete a test….

 

 

Experts question whether patients will use performance data to choose their care

From a November 25, 2010 Eureka news alert

Analysis: How do patients use information on health providers?

Expectations are high that the public will use performance data to choose their health providers and so drive improvements in quality. But in a paper published on bmj.com [here ] today, two experts question whether this is realistic.

They think patient choice is not at present a strong lever for change, and suggest ways in which currently available information can be improved to optimise its effect.

Research conducted over the past 20 years in several countries provides little support for the belief that most patients behave in a consumerist fashion as far as their health is concerned, say Martin Marshall and Vin McLoughlin from The Health Foundation.

Although patients are clear that they want information to be made publicly available, they rarely search for it, often do not understand or trust it, and are unlikely to use it in a rational way to choose the best provider, they write….

…”In this paper, we present a significant challenge to those who believe that providing information to patients to enable them to make choices between providers will be a major driver for improvement in the near or medium term,” they write. “We suggest that, for the foreseeable future, presenting high quality information to patients should be seen as having the softer and longer term benefit of creating a new dynamic between patients and providers, rather than one with the concrete and more immediate outcome of directly driving improvements in quality of care.

Communication in Cancer Care

Communication in Cancer Care is a PDQ (Physician Data Query) summary** which outlines good communication skills among patients, family members, and health care providers. Good communication in all phases of cancer care contributes to the well being of the patient and improves quality of life.

The Communication in Cancer Care Web site has a patient version, a health professional version, and a Spanish language version.

The patient version addresses issues as the roles of family givers and parents, how to talk with the health care team (including the importance of checklists and record keeping)
and where to find more information on communicating effectively in cancer care settings.

The health professional version outlines factors and outcomes related to communicating effectively, how to communicate effectively in cancer care settings, and information on training programs and clinical trials.

On a related note, this is an example of why good communication is important in cancer care…

The Perils of Taking Experimental Cancer Drugs [Reuters Health, Oct 26,2010, by Frederik Joelving]

[Excerpt]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Trying a new, experimental cancer drug may offer a glimpse of hope for very sick patients, but often does more harm than good, a new study shows.

Researchers said cancer doctors regularly resort to drugs still undergoing testing, as long as they have been approved for other diseases or in different combinations or doses.

But because the science is still up in the air, nobody really knows what the consequences of taking such drugs are.

“Many of these drugs end up not being the tremendous improvement that we hoped they would be,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the new study.

“People need to realize that because the trials have not been completed there is a great deal that is not known about the treatments,” he told Reuters Health. “There are people who get these treatments and get hurt.”

The new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, looked at 172 clinical trials published over two years. [Editor Flahiff’s note : Ask a reference librarian at a local public, academic, or medical library for availability and if any fee is involved]

Less than a third of the clinical trials showed the experimental drugs improved patient survival, and less than half found the drugs helped other clinical outcomes…..

……

Sometimes, of course, new drugs do work, and no one argues that doctors shouldn’t be allowed to prescribe medications they think will help patients.

But doctors should be very clear about the high risks involved. One way to do that, said Peppercorn, would be to require that cancer doctors get informed consent from patients before they start them on experimental drugs.

In the end, Brawley said, the decision to use such treatment should be left to the patient and his or her doctor.

“There are times when it can be justified,” he noted, “but it is done far more often than it should be.”

 

—————————————————————————————

**PDQ is an online database developed and maintained by the National Cancer Institute. Designed to make the most current, credible, and accurate cancer information available to health professionals and the public, PDQ contains peer-reviewed summaries on cancer treatment, screening, prevention, genetics, complementary and alternative medicine, and supportive care; a registry of cancer clinical trials from around the world; and directories of physicians, professionals who provide genetics services, and organizations that provide cancer care. Most of this information, and more specific information about PDQ, can be found on the NCI’s Web site athttp://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq. Also called Physician Data Query.

How to Talk to Your Doctor

The National Institutes of Health Senior Health site has new information on how to talk to your doctor.

It includes information on planning an office visit, how to get the most out of an office visit, and conversations after diagnosis.

Includes links to related videos.

Not for seniors only!

Related Resources

• Talking to Your Doctor links you to NIH resources that can help you make the most of your conversations with your doctor.
  Communication is key to good health care.
  Get tips for asking questions and talking openly about your symptoms and concerns.

Includes general guides as well specific advice in these areas: cancer, eye health, diabetes, hearing, heart health, kidney
disease, urologic conditions, weight loss, complementary and alternative medicine, and  aging

Related Articles

• Cooperation between patient and doctor is essential today in health care (kevinmd.com)
• The Benefits of Going to a Geriatric Specialist (everydayhealth.com)
• The Hospitalists Have Become The Gatekeepers for Effective Hospital Coding & Sometimes Bear the Burden Alone (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Before You Go to the Doctor (rawminimum.com)
• Prevent Medical Errors With Health Records (everydayhealth.com)
• Regular Check Up And Health Screenings Can Help Save Your Life (pro2sell.com)