Medicine

She called in tears. Beyond tears, actually. She was so upset that it was impossible to get a coherent history and the triage nurse was only able to ascertain that her psychiatrist was no longer willing to prescribe her long-term clonazepam, she couldn’t function, and that she couldn’t afford the urine drug test. She insisted she wasn’t suicidal and didn’t need to go to the ED Crisis Unit, but begged me to prescribe the clonazepam that her psychiatrist had discontinued. With considerable misgivings, I found a way to see her for an extended appointment later that week.

Sidney Dekker is a world recognized researcher, successful author, speaker and consultant on safety, error, and complex systems.

My institution is striving to become more patient-centered, and is making good progress, but has an odd way of showing it sometimes.

The primary care providers (PCPs) I work with all love what we do. Partnering with patients to improve their lives is challenging but rewarding work, and I almost never hear regrets about going into primary care. But we do complain. And one of the things we like to complain about is that we often feel abused by our better paid limited-specialty colleagues. It doesn’t happen often, but when it happens, the bad feelings may linger for a long time.

George Bernard Shaw said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”  

Medicine has made great strides in the last 100 years.

Science is not a linear or predictable path to truth.

A recent commentary in the New York Times eloquently addressed the phenomenon of psychiatric diagnoses biasing clinicians and resulting in poor care. One concern that arose in the comments was that this might increase the likelihood that patients would withhold crucial diagnostic and therapeutic information, to their detriment. 

We see lots of skin problems in primary care. 

I made an extra trip to the nursing home to visit him on his hundredth birthday.