Word: patients
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...open a clogged artery, pulverize a kidney stone without breaking the skin. But the simple stuff--like getting an MRI on time, being given the right drugs at the right time, making sure everyone knows which side of your brain to operate on--can cause the biggest problems. "A patient with anything but the simplest needs is traversing a very complicated system across many handoffs and locations and players," says Dr. Donald Berwick, a pediatrician and president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. "And as the machine gets more complicated, there are more ways it can break...
...Doctors are terrible patients because they know too much," says Dr. Pamela Gallin, director of pediatric ophthalmology at New York Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center and author of How to Survive Your Doctor's Care. "They can't be both doctor and patient at the same time." They don't like appearing weak; they are schooled in a culture of stoicism and sacrifice that cautions against complaint. In studies of the behavior of doctors, most admit to writing their own prescriptions, self-diagnosing, avoiding checkups. When they do have to enter a hospital as a patient, they struggle with their role...
Doctors will often choose not to be patients at their own hospital. There's a risk that when treating a colleague, the physicians may lose their objectivity and the patient his or her privacy. The same holds true for anyone who goes to a doctor who is also a friend; you run the risk of losing both. This is the hard fact that doctors know and patients have a hard time believing: it's not just bad doctors who screw up. To an outsider, everything that happens in a hospital has an air of magic, and the people...
...Robert Johnson, a busy Southern California orthopedic surgeon, skidded instantly from doctor to patient one day as he walked toward the operating room, scrubbed hands raised, and slipped on a freshly mopped floor. He broke the scaphoid bone in his right wrist, a bone that anchors all the bones in the hand, especially vital for the physically demanding work of an orthopedic surgeon...
...most basic challenge facing every patient is knowing when to go to the local community hospital and when to seek out the major teaching center. For all their fame and all-star doctors, teaching hospitals carry risks of their own. The sickest patients often have compromised immune systems and may need to be treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics--which increases the chance that antibiotic-resistant strains of staph and other bacteria will make the rounds of the intensive-care unit. As a rule, doctors decide where to go based on how sick they are. For fairly routine care...