Professional Health Care Helpers
February 27, 2008
If you or a loved one have ever been diagnosed with a serious disease or admitted to a hospital, you know the stress that comes not just from the illness itself but from making sure you’re getting the best care. Overworked nurses and doctors with poor bed-side manners can be aggravating. Sometimes, if mistakes are made or directions are misunderstood, they can even be fatal.
But the average person lacks the medical expertise needed to measure the work of a provider or insurer. What’s the best course of treatment? Why is my condition not getting better? Why are the nurse and the residents giving me totally different information? How can I make sure my insurance will cover this necessary procedure?
Nurses Prefer Contact to Computers
January 9, 2008
Picture yourself in a hospital bed. Unpleasant, for sure. But aside from family and maybe friends and a super-competent doctor, what’s the most reassuring presence? A nurse. Nurses are often the lifeblood of hospital care - performing the doctors instructions, making sure you’re as comfortable as possible, administering the pain meds and fetching an extra blanket. But the question is now becoming: would you rather have a nurse hovering over you or hovering over a computer? As hospitals move to adopt new technology to help insure quality of care and to reduce medical errors, nurses find they’re getting more and more face-time with a computer screen than with their patients.
Sorry, Charlie
October 1, 2007
This article, “Doctors try new word: Sorry.” in the Chicago Tribune highlights the recent trend of “fess up” - doctors admitting when they make a mistake. Medical errors and traditions in medical practice are just some of the things we have learned more about as we have researched health care in the United States. Before reading this article I had not given much though to what happens when a medical error is made. According to the article it is generally not common for doctors and staff to discuss the error with the patient.
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