[Reblog] The legacy of Dr. Michael Davidson (murdered in his office)

The comments about physicians/health care industry were overwhelmingly thought provoking and insightful.
Some excerpts from the comments…

• What we as a profession appear to be (willfully) unaware of is that we doctors are the face of the healthcare system. To the extent that we do not speak up, protest and advocate for our patients when they are taken advantage of by hospitals and insurers, we provide a face for patients to blame.
• This did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in a culture where there is a lot of rage, sometimes uncontrolled, and easy access to guns. And it happened in a very broken healthcare system which is driven by greedy big business profit motive that results in anyone with money or good insurance getting very overtreated and anyone without money or good insurance getting severely undertreated. And yes, our system has bred a lot of mistrust and hopelessness.
• “Anyone who doesn’t think that corporate executives and hospital administrators take full advantage of the opportunity to hide behind us as they maximize profits at the expense of our patients, is a fool.”

The legacy of Dr. Michael Davidson.

From the 22 January 2015 post at KevinMD

In 1994, I was working at my first radiation oncology job in San Diego at Grossmont Hospital when I came into work to hear disturbing news.  One of my colleagues in medical oncology, a compassionate man known for his gentle nature, had stayed late at the cancer center the evening before to finish up paperwork.  With his back to his ever open door, he sat at his desk never once considering that he was in danger.  A disgruntled relative of a former patient surprised him from behind and beat him viciously over the head and body causing broken bones and contusions, and leaving him for dead.

…

Read the entire article, with comments here.

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[NY Times article] When Best Friends Can Visit

Excerpts from the 10 April 2013 NY Times article

Policies vary at the [few]  institutions that allow visits by patients’ pets, but many share some of the same requirements. A doctor’s order allowing the family pet to visit is typically necessary, as is an attestation from a veterinarian that the animal is healthy and up to date on all its shots. Most institutions require that dogs — the most common visitors, by far — be groomed within a day or so of a visit and on a leash when they walk through hospital corridors. Cats must be taken in and out of the institution in a carrier.

If a dog or cat wants to get up on a patient’s bed, a covering is laid down first. If an animal seems agitated or distressed when it comes into the hospital, staff members who meet the family and escort them to the patient’s room have the right to turn it away. If the patient shares a room with someone, that person must agree before a pet may visit.

“We have not had any problems,” said the Rev. Susan Roy, director of pastoral care services at the University of Maryland Medical Center, whose “your pet can visit” policy has been in place since 2008. If anything, she said, the visits can be hard on dogs, who often respond viscerally to an owner’s illness and may take a day or two to recover from a visit.

Rush University Medical Center spent three years studying the issue before its new pet visitation policy went into effect in February. Diane Gallagher, the hospital’s associate vice president of nursing operations, described some of the questions: Would animals transmit infections to patients, or vice versa? What were the liability issues? Could allowing pets to visit interfere with patient care — if, for instance, a family dog became alarmed and protective of the sick person when a doctor, a nurse or a technician came into the room?

In the end, officials decided that the benefits — comfort and reduced stress for patients — were more substantial than the risks.

Although research has shown that hospital therapy dogs can pick up germs and potentially transmit bacteria that can cause dangerous infections, those animals typically wander from room to room, while people’s own pets are expected to stay with the patient they are visiting. If someone has an open wound or an active infection, a visit from a family pet is discouraged, according to most hospital policies.

Research on the value of personal pets visiting patients in the hospital hasn’t been done. One small 2010 study of 10 healthy dog owners by researchers atVirginia Commonwealth’s Center for Human-Animal Interaction found that both unfamiliar and familiar dogs provoked similar reactions: a relaxation response and reduction in blood pressure and levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone, according to Dr. Sandra Barker, director of the center and a professor of psychiatry.

Read the entire article here

 

 

[Reblog] Gloves and Gowns Don’t Stop Spread of All Infections in Hospitals

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Bacteria (Photo credit: NIAID)

 

From the 5 October 2013 post at Time- Health & Family

 

Bacterial infections can imperil the fragile patients at hospitals‘ intensive care units. And a new study reveals an unlikely spreader: the health care workers who treat them. The standard sterile hospital garb typically thought to prevent infections isn’t helping.

 

Physical barriers are the most effective way to block invisible intruders like the bacteria responsible for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) infections, which are among the most common hospital-acquired pathogens. Such strains, which are resistant to most antibiotic treatments, contribute to more than $4 billion in health care costs for treating the skin lesions, respiratory symptoms and sepsis that the bacteria cause.

It’s hardly been clear that requiring all health care workers to put on gowns and gloves before visiting each patient, then discarding and re-robing before visiting the next patient, would help to reduce the spread of such infections in ICUs. The Centers for Disease Control currently recommends that workers suit up with gowns and gloves before caring for patients with known MRSA or VRE infections, but researchers led by Dr. Anthony Harris at the University of Maryland School of Medicine wanted to see how effective universal gowning and gloving would be in lowering the number of new cases of disease in ICUs.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/05/gloves-and-gowns-dont-stop-spread-of-all-infections-in-hospitals/#ixzz2hgctzzKb

 

Doing the right thing when things go wrong

English: PACIFIC OCEAN (Aug. 10, 2007) – Lt. Cmdr. Angela Powell, an otolaryngologist assisted by Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Daniel Vogel a surgical technician, performs surgery aboard the Military Sealift Command (MSC) hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20). Comfort is on a four-month humanitarian deployment to Latin America and the Caribbean providing medical treatment to patients in a dozen countries. U.S. Navy photo by Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Jean A. Wertman (RELEASED) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 14 December 2012 EurkAlert article

 

…UMHS approach to medical errors and malpractice suits could be used by hospitals nationwide, new study indicates

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan Health System doesn’t claim to be perfect. But its response to medical errors, near-misses, unexpected clinical problems and unintended outcomes is a model for the nation that other hospitals can and should copy, according to a new paper in a prestigious health care journal.

The “Michigan Model” for handling these situations, and preventing them from happening again, has not only helped patients and medical staff alike – it has also helped UMHS go against the grain of the costly, combative “deny and defend” medical malpractice culture…

…Campbell and Boothman have led a decade-long effort to implement and measure the results of the Michigan Model. It’s based on these key principles:

 

• Compensate patients quickly and fairly when inappropriate care causes injury
• Support clinical staff when the care was reasonable
• Reduce patient injuries (and claims) by learning from patients’ experiences

In that decade, new malpractice claims per month have dropped, total liability costs have dropped, claims and potential claims are being resolved faster, and UMHS is increasingly avoiding litigation in both claims without merit and claims with merit.

 

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