jenuesse health

Remember the story about my MD friend's elderly mother , the one who was suffering from falls because she was over-medicated for blood pressure issues? Once the doses were reduced, she did fine: "She has more stamina than ever before. She is happy." Well, here's the next chapter: So Mom is back in her original assisted living place, walking with a walker, to everyone's surprise. However, the medical errors are following her. When she was being discharged, the rehab center sat me down and gave me a discharge summary and medication list, saying they had been faxed to the original nursing home. We went over and discussed every medication. 9 pm the night she went back, my phone rings; it's the nursing office of the original place saying they have her on Tramadol but the pharmacy says there is an allergy. I said, "What?" You see, Tramadol was not on her medication list. They said, "It wasn't on the list YOU gave us but it IS on the lis...

Way back in December 2013 , I introduced my readers to OpenBiome, a start-up formed by a couple of MIT graduate students who had a new concept for Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), which is now recognized as an effective cure for C. difficile patients. In March of this year, I reported from one of the founders: We've experienced rapid growth and are working with over 230 hospitals in 43 states and have provided treatments for over 2800 recurrent C. difficile patients at this point.  We have also been testing and developing an encapsulated formulation that should reduce procedure related costs and risks for treatment of C. difficile, while enabling long term maintenance therapy for the investigation of chronic conditions where a single dose is unlikely to provide lasting benefit.  Now it looks like that approach is going well. Gabrielle Emanuel at the Commonhealth blog reports : Fecal transplants may have just gotten a lot easier to swallow. OpenBiome , the nation’s f...

Blogger Melissa Clarkson offers a wryly humorous take on a goal established by the CMS Partnership for Patients, to reduce preventable harm by 40% between 2010 and 2014.  She asks: I was not aware that harm comes as a mix of acceptable harm and unacceptable harm and the concern is getting rid of the unacceptable portion. But if hospitals are striving for such a goal, I simply ask that they fully explain this to patients and families. And to help, I would like to provide some ideas for facilitating this communication. Here are some of the graphics she proposes for those hospitals who wish to be fully transparent. For a hospital welcome sign: For a marketing campaign: For the front lobby: More seriously, and perhaps not coincidentally, according to this Modern Healthcare article : The Leapfrog Group has released the second round of its bi-annual hospital safety scores, which show “sluggish” improvement in patient safety among the nation's hospitals.

I have made a serious commitment on this blog to promulgate the best in medical education, with a strong emphasis on programs that focus on clinical quality and safety improvement. It was with a delighted gasp of approval, therefore, that I read this recent bit of feedback posted on the residents' bulletin board of the anaesthesia department at a major academic medical center. This is truly superb pedagogy, well worth emulating in other training programs. In case you are not familiar with Wu-Tang Clan, you can enhance your cultural competence by viewing this video .

Several months ago, through a virtual friendship with her father, I got to know a young lady named Clarissa Schilstra.  She is a lovely and thoughtful person who has been through double doses of cancer in her short life.  She is now a member of the class of 2016 at Duke University. We first met in person (all three of us) in August of 2014.  Clarissa felt that she learned a lot from the passages of her life and wanted to share what she had learned with others, and so she wrote me back in July: "I am really excited to tell you that I have written a book this summer, to help teens and young adults with cancer through the social and emotional challenges of treatment." The book is now out , and it is very, very good.  My review is as follows: Clarissa Schilstra offers knowledge, wisdom, and advice to teenagers and young adults who are facing the travails of a cancer diagnosis. Drawing from her own experience, employing plain talk and empathy, she offers helpful sugg...

My friend and colleague Michael Wheeler, in his excellent book The Art of Negotiation , notes: "Negotiation is never about us alone. What ultimately unfolds is a function of each party's attitudes and decisions, not just our own. Asking ourselves, 'How did I do?' is the wrong question.  It's a one-hand-clapping exercise.  Instead our starting point should be, where did we end up and how did we get there?" I was reminded of this advice by a New York Times article about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon. Excerpts: “My advice is fight for the things that you care about,” Justice Ginsburg said. Fair enough — banal enough, really. Then she added, “But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” Justice Ginsburg [has] no patience for confrontation just for the sake of it. “Anger, resentment, envy and self-pity are wasteful reactions,” she has written. “They greatly drain one’s time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.” A...

A person who has over 3000 friends on Facebook saw no irony in posting the picture above in her status bar.