Medical Professionals

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/37700634 ([email protected])

The article description below is from an email newsletter:

Physicians are expected to always act in the best interest of their patients. Increasingly, many doctors find they must speak up and be advocates before a world that seemingly cares little for the lives and rights of their patients. In some cases, that advocacy has been in the form of civil disobedience against policies and laws seen to be unjust or inequitable.

However, civil disobedience by doctors is complicated. On the one hand, medicine is a profession of norms, rules, regulations, standards and tradition. On the other, there are often times of moral crisis that call on physicians to challenge those very norms, rules and expectations.

Today in The Conversation Canada Wael Haddara from the Schulich School of Medicine at Western University discusses his research into how the Canadian Medical Association’s code of ethics has changed over the decades, and explains why doctors sometimes need to take a moral stand, even with the risk of losing their job.

I'm currently on my pediatrics rotation and on my first day in clinic, I had about 40% of families decline vaccinations. For the last visit of the day, the patient was a 3 week old coming in for her newborn followup and her parents said that they were against all vaccinations.

I asked them to tell me what their concerns were and spent an hour debunking conspiracy theories and answering all the questions they had. By the end of the discussion, they agreed to look at the CDC fact sheets for the recommended childhood vaccinations for the first year of life and said they would look at doing a delayed vaccination schedule at least. They wanted specific numbers and data about complication rates, but I didn't have that on hand. They seemed okay with my explanation that the data is everyone walking around that got all their childhood vaccinations and are doing fine.

Now, as a medical student, my time is basically worthless and I can absolutely sit there for an hour and answer questions, but I won't be able to do that in practice. I'd love any suggestions on how to compress that discussion (or confirmation that I'd just have to schedule those appointments at the end of the day and spend the hour.)

Sorry but I had to share this, it’s gold, and such an on point critique. And very relevant for anyone informing clinical decisions with RCTs.

I have some previous experience fighting with the ~~mass-murderers~~...I mean...insurance companies from the role of a clinic assistant, but I want to hear perspectives from physicians or other providers about your approaches to dealing with them.

I plan on being very familiar with the ICD-10's and CPT's and how to match those up as advantageously as possible, but I know that won't be enough on it's own. Do you think having someone in the office with medical training whose job it is to deal with insurance companies as their primary/only job is necessary?

"The Adjuster" has definitely captured the collective consciousness and kicked off some serious discussions, but I'm afraid that the mainstream media, corporations, and corporate-owned politicians are going to stamp this out or defy the will of the people so vehemently that it won't matter what we do short of full-on revolution.

This is a great article written by Robert Evans of 'Behind the Bastards' fame that goes into Luigi's background, social media presence, and apparent ideologies.

We all have had patients with chronic pain, we all know someone with chronic pain, and some of us unfortunately have chronic pain. We know how horrible it can make someone's life, and how much worse life can be if your insurance just keeps denying anything that could help.

Edit: Here’s a link to what is most likely the real manifesto: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

Ken Klippenstein is a very reliable journalist and this version of the manifesto contains the snippets that have been released by law enforcement. Also, considering the thing was hand-written, that very long version involving his mom is dubious. (And there’s not any good evidence that his mom is in anything besides decent/good health)

I'm still a medical student, but I'm about to start planning out my 4th year, and I'm hoping to structure my electives to get the best education I can to help as many people as possible. I'm also planning on moonlighting somewhere like Planned Parenthood while I'm in residency to do a bit more in the way of direct assistance. (I'm pretty sure my state is just blue enough that PP will continue to exist in some capacity.)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31913012

My thoughts are summarized by this line

Casey Fiesler, Associate Professor of Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder, told me in a call that while it’s good for physicians to be discouraged from putting patient data into the open-web version of ChatGPT, how the Northwell network implements privacy safeguards is important—as is education for users. “I would hope that if hospital staff is being encouraged to use these tools, that there is some significant education about how they work and how it's appropriate and not appropriate,” she said. “I would be uncomfortable with medical providers using this technology without understanding the limitations and risks. ”

It's good to have an AI model running on the internal network, to help with emails and the such. A model such as Perplexity could be good for parsing research articles, as long as the user clicks the links to follow-up in the sources.

It's not good to use it for tasks that traditional "AI" was already doing, because traditional AI doesn't hallucinate and it doesn't require so much processing power.

It absolutely should not be used for diagnosis or insurance claims.

Having just completed my surgery clerkship, this is surprisingly accurate.

Let's hope Cigna catches some real consequences this time. (Not likely, but we can hope.)

I like to go through and take a couple of these tests every now and then to kind of check up on myself to make sure I'm not developing biases that will negatively impact my ability to care for my patients. I think it's probably a good idea to at least get a baseline for yourself so you know when you're most likely going to need to self-monitor what you say and do more closely.

Nearly 200 health professionals have written to the health secretary saying that patients with the illness are being left to ‘languish behind closed doors’

The Times (UK)

Doctors have said that NHS patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) risk starving to death because of unsafe and “unconscionable” standards of care. 

The letter calls for the government to take action to address the “serious patient safety concerns” for patients with ME, an illness which affects about 250,000 people in the UK.

More than 200 health professionals including GPs, hospital consultants and nurses have written to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, saying that patients with the illness are being left to “languish behind closed doors” because specialist NHS services to provide safe care “do not exist”.

ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, is a complex neurological disorder that leads to symptoms including extreme exhaustion. Severe cases can be fatal, with patients bedridden and unable to eat or drink, but these patients currently “fall through the cracks” as there is no specialist NHS care provision. 

A letter signed by 202 doctors and NHS staff calls on ministers to convene an ME clinical task force providing “emergency specialist guidance in cases where patients are hospitalised”, as well as to commit to holding NHS trusts “accountable” for care.

They write: “There is little access to truly specialist ME care or treatment within the NHS and paradoxically, the sicker a patient is, the less care they receive.

“Even if doctors and healthcare professionals are knowledgeable and willing to treat patients, the infrastructure to provide safe and appropriate care does not exist.”

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