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When you sleep with your bottle, you’ve passed a milestone in your addiction. You’ve got to have it against your chest, all night, easy to reach. Your relationship to it is like other people’s relationships with their smart phones; it’s crucial to your existence, always clutched in your hand. You feel unsettled when you can’t […] Perhaps you remember Sam, the chronic inebriate whose story I shared to discuss the pitfalls of basing doctor pay on patient satisfaction surveys. Looking at his discharge papers, I wondered who helped Sam fill his survey out, and how much their “help” affected the results. After all, millions upon millions of dollars are already now […] Take a moment to ask yourself whether any of these categories describe you or someone you love: Never had cancer Psychologically distressed No regular health care provider No health insurance Lack confidence in self care Avoid doctors Minority race If any of these terms describes you or a loved one, then you are statistically more […] Patients Rating Doctors: Let’s Pay Popular People More! Obligatory conflict-of-interest announcement: I am paid an hourly salary by a local government. My patients may fill out satisfaction surveys for other physicians in other settings, but they don’t for me. Part One of Three: My patient only had 20 minutes to wait for the van […] You’re working your way through your many patients one day, and this is what you encounter: A woman who won’t meet your gaze when you ask her questions. A man who rocks on the end of the exam table, arms crossed over his chest, eyes unfocused, even as he denies hearing voices. Another woman who […] With a traumatic brain injury, you feel yourself slipping away. You can’t remember things that used to come easily, things like how to find the grocery store — acts and details that live, mocking, at the edges of your thoughts, just outside your grasp. You know there’s something wrong, but you have a sense that it’s […] |
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