Tag: communication



Think fax machines are the only out-dated tech in healthcare? Sandeep Bansal, CEO of Medic Bleep makes the case that outdated internal phone-based paging systems used by hospitals need to go too. According to Sandeep, the UK’s NHS clocks 1 billion internal phone calls a year, with a full 23% of them solely made just to find the right number for the person they are really trying to call. What works better? Listen in to how Medic Bleep plans to provide a communication system for health system staffs that actually matches the way they work to deliver care.

Filmed at Webit Health in Sofia, Bulgaria, May 2019.

Does It Matter If You Get Along With Your Doctor?

Seems like a silly question, right? 

No one ever asks if you get along with the cashier at the grocery store or the barista at your neighborhood coffee shop.  For most folks choosing a doctor means finding someone in your area who’s taking new patients with your insurance, which usually isn’t too many. 

Simply getting an appointment is hard enough, so expecting a pleasant experience and a good relationship with the doctor seems to be an unreasonable request, like asking for a unicorn who also speaks fluent Spanish. Many people don’t think patient-physician relationship is particularly important; they’re looking to the doctor for medical advice, not to be a friend.  In these days of electronic medical records and 15 minute appointments, many physicians simply don’t have the time to get to know patients and find out their motivations, goals and fears.  It’s even harder for patients with language and cultural barriers; for example, physicians talk more and listen less to black patients than to white patients

So why do we care? 

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Health IT

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“You Doctors These Days Just Want Us To Go off and Die …”

A recent case taught me a lot about how people perceive their medicines.

I was trying to help a 92-year-old man get off some of his medicine. I can’t go into the details, but suffice to say, there was much opportunity to trim a long list of drugs, many of which were threatening his existence and impairing his quality of life.

As I was discussing stopping many of the meds, the patient said (with a quite sincere tone):

“You doctors these days just want us old people to go off and die.”

That was a zinger, a real punch in the gut. I was trying to do the opposite–allow him to live a longer and better life–but the patient perceived me as a mini-death panel.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this case. Why was this man “attached” to his meds? Why had he associated his longevity with chemicals that now threatened his existence?

The answer, I believe, is a knowledge gap. He, like many people, doctors included, fell into the trap of association and causation. He associated his health with his medicines; he overestimated their benefits. He thought the pills were keeping him alive. They were not. He lived despite his medicines.

What I tried to explain to this patient was that benefits from medicines do not continue indefinitely. Things change in the elderly, and, what is for younger patients may not be in the aged.

Take the case of preventing stroke in the elderly. Simple drugs, such as high blood pressure medicines and statins, may no longer offer a net benefit to the patient over the age of 80. Really. It is true.

Let me tell you about a recent commentary in the journal Evidence Based Medicine (from BMJ).

Dr Kit Byatt is a doctor in the UK who specializes in Geriatric Medicine. He wrote this refreshingly concise summaryoutlining four reasons why the medical community should reconsider its overenthusiastic views of stroke reduction in patients over the age of 80. In the title, Dr. Byatt asks whether we are being disingenuous to ourselves and to our elderly patients.

The answer is yes.

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