There's a scene — and a story — on every Roman street.
Here, in the Trastevere section of Rome that is a hot spot for artists, this "parking space" seems to be reserved for musicians only!
Street scene on Vicolo dé Cinque in the Trastevere section of Rome, shot on May 18, 2013.
With our son just starting medical school, we are sure to be in for plenty of this kind of humor.
Of course, there is a real lesson here — listen to your patient, hear what they have to say and then use your knowledge, wisdom and skill (and seek help when you need more of all three!) to find the best treatment plan.
Health care is a team sport — it starts with the patient and the physician.
Just about every media outlet has a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
But only one site — www.wearestillmarching.com — truly immerses you in Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic speech.
It was developed by the National Park Foundation and made by ad agency Organic with support from Google.
Relive August 28, 1963, today.
Doctors are working harder than ever.
Doctors are on a hamster wheel these days. We're compelled to run faster just to stay in place.
That's from an essay on NPR's Shots blog ("Doctors Look For A Way Off The Medical Hamster Wheel," August 14, 2013) by John Schumann, MD, an internist and educator at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, Okla., who blogs at GlassHospital.
Like most who get into health care, Dr. Schumann "became a doctor to help people."
When I was a medical student, I held the naive and idealistic belief that if I just did good work, the business side of things would somehow take care of itself.
How wrong I was.
Now I'm an internist taking care of all comers age 18 and up. Some days I find myself facing patients and feeling more like a harried airline clerk than a real doctor.
The frustration goes both ways.
Doctors feel they have no time with patients. Patients feel they have no time with their doctors.
Everyone's talking about building a team approach to health care where caregivers "work at the top of their license." That means doctors take care of the sickest patients and other members of the team, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, handle more "routine" issues.
But the team needs to go well beyond doctors, NPs, PAs and other nurses. Dr. Schumann suggests an answer may come from Ben Crocker, MD, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital who once "was so burned out [that] in 2007 he lamented, 'Working at Starbucks would be better.'"
Now, his practice at Massachusetts General Hospital employs health coaches to work with patients on making the lifestyle changes that doctors recommend but can't adequately teach or monitor. Virtual visits — by phone, email or video link — have replaced some in-person visits. Perhaps most incredibly, the practice offers staff downtime each week to come up with innovations.
Sign me up!
A key ingredient here is health coaches — people who work alongside the care team to help educate patients, offer encouragement and improve compliance. This can also include community health workers, or CHWs, who are members of the same community who can often better connect with patients and their families in the places that are most comfortable to them, such as a barber shop, beauty salon or ethnic social club.
If we truly expand the care team — and have everyone working at the top of their game — we can make substantial improvements in patient compliance around treatable, even avoidable, diseases and ultimately improve community health.
And, in the end, it will save money and make spinning that hamster wheel a little easier for everyone.
Source: NPR
The venerable "timeline" has gotten plenty of attention in the digital age.
Timelines have long been a standard storytelling tool, but they have often been dry or complicated.
The New York Times just upped the ante with a recent web feature ("Riding the New Silk Road," July 21, 2013) that is elegantly simple and cleverly captivating.
The Times' feature blends photos and looping videos with minimal text attached to a background map to illustrate how Hewlett-Packard ships electronics from China to European markets. As you scroll down the page, the background map moves with you while points along the map connect to the forefront images and video.
This storytelling technique would be ideal for health care — give a behind-the-curtain glimpse into what is a very complex and confusing world for patients.
It could be used to tell the story of how a blood sample moves through the system — from blood draw to transport to the lab to the computer to the physician making a decision based on the results. Explain each point along the way and patients will better understand why it takes "so long" to get those results back.
Jim Rattray is an award-winning creative professional who has worked extensively in health care, education, corporations and journalism and speaks to marketing and PR audiences on using new tools for public relations, marketing, branding and patient engagement.
The banner photo is of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in California. It was taken at sunset from Glacier Point on October 1, 2012.
Follow my writing and that of others in the Patient Engagement arena on EngagingPatients.org.
