The following is a 750-word op-ed that originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on 4.8.12. At first I didn’t think I could condense a day-long conversation into 1150 words (I mimicked the word count that paid freelance columnists get). I did—but papers really do enforce their word counts for you and me so that […]
. One impetus towards patient-advocates focuses on stories. Our stories. Stories of harm, shock, abuse, neglect, pain, suffering, injury, death, and their outcome, including our phoenix-like rise from them. I perceive a dark side to storytelling in the context of patient-family members relaying their stories to audiences of medical professionals. On the IHI Patient Activist […]
It’s back: that scary phrase, that bald lie: “death panel.” As in, “the United States government will enact or enable panels of bureaucrats who will withhold medical treatment from your grandma or grandpa and let them instead die.” This was a (failed) provision of 2010’s healthcare reform act; now the accusers say that death panels […]
When I published Notes from the Waiting Room: Managing a Loved One’s End of Life Hospitalization in 2008 I included a chapter with proposals for medical system reform. Among them was something I called Communication Algorithms: Physician-scientists are trained in and use “decision trees” to arrive at diagnoses. The series of if/else questions is referred […]
December 2010: Preface to this post, 1 1/2 years later What follows is, in part, a snide and angry post. It’s raw. In a Be Nice world, it’s risky of me to post it and keep it posted. The sorts of occurrences that give rise to patient advocacy are fueled at their outset by anger. That’s the […]
INAUGURAL BLOG POST: This weekend I attended the Colorado Independent Publishers Association annual College—the annual brain dump, er, conference. Saturday’s closing session, by distant past President Kenn Amdahl, titled My Obsession Your Obsession, was brilliant. A melange/collage of thought and expression, Kenn spoke over/while playing guitar, resurrecting and interpreting 200 year old unearthed Irish folk […]
