Clinical care for Obesity and Diet Related illnesses needs more attention to Societal Determinants of Health Article from NEJM website about how despite rates of obesity starting to level off overall, the lowest income and minority populations continue to show a sharp increase. A focus on those factors as contributory needs to be a part of the discussion.
Social stigma makes the opioid crisis hard to confront (7min) There are many reasons why the opioid crisis is so hard to confront. One of them is social stigma. It often extends beyond users themselves, to their families. People see addiction as a moral weakness, and by extension, the moral weakness of their families.
When drinking ruins your liver - should you qualify for a transplant? When patients develop alcohol liver disease, they are often forced to wait 6 months to prove they can abstain from alcohol before they will be considered for a transplant. Is that a fair amount of time? Is that a fair practice at all?
Withholding surgery: How gaps in policy fail people who inject drugs A recent New York Times article described a harrowing situation faced by some people who inject drugs and develop endocarditis, a life-threatening infection caused by bacteria that enter the bloodstream and settle in the heart. The article described doctors in Tennessee deciding whether to perform repeat costly heart surgeries on patients who were re-infected with endocarditis as a result of ongoing illicit drug use—and at times declining to operate. There are policy failures that are to blame, too, for how and why resources are allocated this way. This looks at those failures and how our bias influences both the policies and how they are applied.
Injecting Drugs can ruin a heart - how many second chances should a user get? A life-threatening heart infection afflicts a growing number of people who inject opioids or meth. Costly surgery can fix it, but the addiction often goes unaddressed.
Liminal Thinking - The Pyramid of Belief by Dave Gray In this sketch video, Dave Gray postulates that each of us has own reality based upon our individual pyramid of belief. Recognizing that these pyramids are built upon our life experiences and put us at risk of becoming blind to our assumptions and biases is a particularly resonant message for healthcare professionals whose assumptions and biases can have grave implications.
Old Age, From Youth's Narrow Prism by Marc Agronin This poignant article about a physician’s reaction to an elderly patient offers an insight into what can happen when we assume that other people’s personal context is the same as our own.
Liminal Thinking - The Pyramid of Belief by Dave Gray In this sketch video, Dave Gray postulates that each of us has own reality based upon our individual pyramid of belief. Recognizing that these pyramids are built upon our life experiences and put us at risk of becoming blind to our assumptions and biases is a particularly resonant message for healthcare professionals whose assumptions and biases can have grave implications.
Old Age, From Youth's Narrow Prism by Marc Agronin This poignant article about a physician’s reaction to an elderly patient offers an insight into what can happen when we assume that other people’s personal context is the same as our own.