Word: patients
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...probably began innocently enough, perhaps as a semantic slip. First came the term "outcome-based" medicine, which refers to the practice of determining the value of a treatment by seeing what happens to the patients you do it to. (The shiny new label aside, it's the way we've always done things in medicine.) Then "patient satisfaction" emerged as a relevant outcome parameter - or, the thing you check to see if the intervention was actually a good idea. That seemed reasonable too - is there a better goal than having a happy patient? From there, it was only a side...
...Patients are those for whom good, young doctors forgo happy nights of beer and dancing. Patients are the ones great nurses worry about, sit up with and linger to take care of, when they could be home with their kids. We continue to study the journals and the books for patients, even when we're 60 and can barely see the words on a page anymore. We take them on knowing they won't pay a dime, knowing they're going to complain, knowing their prognosis stinks. We know how vulnerable patients are - that they literally lie open...
...both Epstein and Jha caution that these characteristics should not be used to make assumptions about patient care...
...researchers were trying to determine whether a higher ranking corresponded with better patient outcomes...
...just like any other. Tucked in between the carefree yawn of summer and the impending rigors of fall, it straddles a bittersweet block of the calendar, but to Karen Dyer, it is much more than that. Aug. 27, 1994, marked her arduous transition from typical teen to cancer patient. That was the day doctors removed what they thought was a benign cyst above her left hip. Then 15, Dyer learned that her life had changed forever. "It's funny," she says. "My main worry then was losing my hair, of looking different from everyone else. I never thought about dying...