Puerto Rican Doctors Laughing in Photos With Haitian Victims
It seems that 60 or so PR doctors thought it would be a good idea to pose with Haitian Earthquake victims holding soldiers guns and having a great time doing it.
Some were holding beers, condoms, and saws next to people who were bloody, hurt, and half dressed.
Puerto Rico is investigating the doctors for ethics vialations. They say they have already punished the soldiers who offered up their guns to the docs to pose for these photos.
Some of the Haitian earthquake victims were transported to the Dominican Republic and about 60 doctors from PR went there to aid these people.
Maybe someone should explain to the “doctors” what aid really means.
To me and I’m sure many others around the world this is beyond ethics violations. It’s heartless, inhumane, and unforgivable. I certainly would not see a doctor who thought this kind of human suffering was funny or see it as a photogenic moment.
You might say this is a mere handful of doctors out of thousands, but who knows how many more that are this way and just haven’t gotten caught yet?
Doctors and Gods
Most people won’t admit this, but doctors are often treated like gods, or least the pope in the respect that they think they are infallible, that is until a mistake happens. Most doctors are very dedicated to their patients and to doing the best they can to keep them healthy, cure them of disease, and extend their lives.
These same people tend to put all their faith and responsibility into their doctors which I believe is a wrong approach to health care. We as the public need to take some responsibility for our own health by learning how our bodies work and how injuries and illnesses are treated.
If you have some doubts about the treatment or diagnosis you are getting from your doctor don’t be afraid to question it or get a second opinion.
A number of years ago I cut my hand and got 8 stitches at the E.R.. That doctor explained to me that he gave me one continuous stitch instead of 8 individual stitches and that when I went to my doctor it was important to let them know that. I didn’t have a regular doctor so one was recommended to me. When it came time to get them out I went to the doctor and told her what the ER doctor had said. She then began to remove the stitches by snipping the first one and pulling on it. She pulled and pulled and the more she did so, the more pain I was in. She then went and got another older doctor to look at it and he did the same thing, even after I repeated what the ER doctor had said. I was in agony and my hand began to bleed. He then told me and the woman doctor that my cut was probably not ready to have the stitiches out yet. They covered it up and told me to come back in a few days. They also billed me for a hundred dollars.
Of course I went home and simple snipped them one by one and gently pulled them out, painlessly and easily. The point is they don’t all know what they are doing, and no, I did not pay that one hundred dollar bill.
Medical Residents and Sleep
I have watched my share of medical shows on TV and one of the things you learn from these shows is that doctors in training work very long shifts, somtimes 24, 36, or even more hours straight. That has always worried me. As a patient walking into an ER, I don’t want an overtired doctor working on me.
There are plenty of other jobs where there are limits on the amount of hours they can work in a shift and in a pay period, like airline pilots, air traffic control, and truck driviers, to name a few. Seems to me doctors should be right up there in that list.
Beside money, which is always the very bottom line, the other reasoning for these long shifts is that when a person comes in and is seen by one of the doctors, tests have to be done and most of the time these tests take hours. If a doctor or resident only works 8 to 10 hour shifts, they may be off duty by the time the test results come back, which means another doctor would be on duty and not familiar with the case.
I’m not sure whether I agree that it’s a valid point for working long shifts, but I do know that I find it troublesome that doctors know the body needs the proper amount of sleep and yet they go about life without it themselves.
They do have restictions on shift hours, however they are still too long, and if one life is lost because of this it’s one life too many. Stick to a max of 16 hours at a time, and call it a day.
Placebos, A Help Or A Deception?
A recent study indicates that almost half of all doctor routinely prescribe placebos to treat certain conditions. Most of the placebos used were headache pills and vitamins, but some also use sedatives and antibiotics. The latter two really shouldn’t be classified as placebos because they do effect the body.
Doctors say they doubt that half of all doctors do it but the survey by the doctors say otherwise. Only about 5% of the doctors tell the patients they are placebos. The rest usually tell the patients that the pills are not really for their condition but they think they may help.
Medical ethicists are opposed to this practice because they say it ruins the trust in the doctor patient relationship. However, many people do respond to the pills as if they were actually working.
We’ve seen this with that cold medicine that the second grade teacher invented. I know people who think it has magic properties to kill a cold before it gets bad. It works for them because they believe it will work. It does sort of sound like a magic pill, doesn’t it?
So is it right or wrong to prescribe placebos? If they end up working, even if it works just because the person is led to believe it will work, is that wrong? I don’t have the answer, what do you think of this practice?
Retail Medical Centers
Retail Medical Centers are those clinics usually run by a nurse practitioner who is there to treat simple and common conditions such as colds, sore throats, and Ut infections.
From the start, doctors did not like this idea because they reasoned that first if you’re anything less than a doctor you can’t possibly be able to diagnose a sore throat or cold, and second they said that it would interfere with the relationship between the doctor and patient.
It would seem that they are wrong on both counts. First doctors do not always diagnose and treat correctly, and second the nurse practitioners go to school for years and often have many years experience.
A couple of recent studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of patients that go to these clinics have no regular doctor, no health insurance, and no regular medical care. It seems logical to me that instead of having these people running to the ER to be treated for such minor and common ailments, or even tie up a doctors time with these things, it’s better for everyone that they visit these inexpensive clinics.
On top of that, any nurse worth her salt will be able to recognize conditions that may be out of her league and will refer the patient to a doctor or hospital. In this writers opinion these clinics are sorely needed and wanted. I believe in the long run they will save the entire medical system money as well as the patient involved.
MedPedia
MedPedia is a new website that will become the Wiki for medical information. It’s being put together right now, with contributors having no less than an MD or PHD. Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley are all involved and the project is getting support from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the FDA, among other research groups. They plan to open the site late 2008.
The information will be presented in two ways, first the front page will have the information in a way that’s easy for the general public to understand, and then there will be a more technical page for medical professionals.
Even though there is already medical information on-line, they believe that because contributors will be specialists in their fields, and not just general doctors entering the information it will have an advantage.
I think this site is a great idea because it will have information on so many topics like diseases, drugs, and research results and it promises to go more in depth on these issues. The information will be overseen by a very qualified board of Directors.
More Heart Attack Education Needed
A recent study suggests that many people who have heart disease still don’t know the symptoms of a heart attack. Lives can be saved if someone who is having a heart attack can get help within the first hour of having the symptoms. However it was found that most people don’t seek help until more than two hours have passed, and that means lives are being lost.
A few of the symptoms are pain in the jaw, left arm, or chest and can also include nausea. Of course most of us reason that there also can be many other reasons for these symptoms so we don’t run right to the ER, especially if we are uninsured.
The key seems to be that we all need to be aware if we are at risk for a heart attack. If you know you are at risk than these symptoms could certainly be telling you what is happening.
Doctors say that shorter hospital stays and more outpatient treatments could be a factor in not being educated enough about heart attacks, and right now no one is sure about how to better inform people about their risk. What they do know is that this is costing many lives that could otherwise be saved with early and prompt treatment.
Talk to your doctor about your risks and the health of your heart, it may save your life one day.
Location and Medicare
A study that’s done every two years has concluded that Medicare is paying wildly different amounts depending on where in the United States you live. Some are four times as much as others.
They looked at ill seniors and disabled people and the care and length of hospital stays in their last two years of life. What they found was that doctors seemed to tailor the care they gave with the resources they had available. For example, if a city typically had few beds open, hospital stays where short and many would be treated as outpatients or in the doctors offices. Cities that had many beds open would have sick people staying a lot longer in that hospital.
This might seem logical and maybe not even worth a study. After all, if you don’t have beds for patients they can’t stay in the hospital. That seems to make sense. My question is why are people not staying in the hospitals for the amount of time they need to and no more? Why are people who are in need of hospital care being sent home, while those who could be treated at home are in the hospital?
I’m also wondering if these stats will be ever changing. What I mean is if you have an area where beds are tied up with lengthy stays won’t doctors start shortening those stays to free up beds? In time won’t there be many open beds because of shorter stays, which will in turn encourage doctors to keep patients longer and repeat the cycle?
Sounds like a game I don’t want to play.
Women and New Knees
Research shows that women wait a lot longer before they opt for knee replacement surgery than men.
The main reason is that doctors usually explain to patients that the new artificial knees will probably also need replacing in the future because even the titanium knees will wear out. Women will eventually die without having to have those second replacements, whereas men will live to have another surgery.
For that reason doctors tell people to wait to have the surgery until they can’t get around or stand the pain anymore. Men tend to elect for the surgery when they can no longer get around outside the home. Women wait until they can no longer get around inside the home.
Another way to interpret this data is that women simply can tolerate more pain and immobility than men. That is just my theory, what do you think?