Tag: The OpEd Project

The Intrusion of Big Tech into Healthcare Threatens Patients’ Rights

Dec 24, 2019• 1

By ANDREW DORSCH, MD

The question of how much time I spend in front of the screen has pestered me professionally and personally.

A recent topic of conversation among parents at my children’s preschool has been how much screen time my toddlers’ brain can handle. It was spurred on by a study in JAMA Pediatrics that evaluated the association between screen time and brain structure in toddlers. The study reported that those children who spent more time with electronic devices had lower measures of organization in brain pathways involved in language and reading.

As a neurologist, these findings worry me, for my children and for myself. I wonder if I’m changing the structure of my brain for the worse as a result of prolonged time spent in front of a computer completing medical documentation. I think that, without the move to electronic medical records, I might be in better stead — in more ways than one. Not only is using them potentially affecting my brain, they pose a danger to my patients, too, in that they threaten their privacy.

As any practicing physician can tell you, electronic medical records represent a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. They present a tangible benefit in that medical documentation is now legible and information from different institutions can be obtained with the click of a button — compared to the method of decades past, in which a doctor hand-wrote notes in a paper chart — but there’s also a downside.

Rebuilding Trust in our Doctors: An Option for our Broken System

Dec 6, 2019• 6

By AMITA NATHWANI, MA

This week’s impeachment hearings show what a crisis of trust we live in today. 69% of Americans believe the government withholds information from the public, according to recent findings by Pew Research Center. Just 41 % of Americans trust news organizations. We even distrust our own health care providers: Only 34% of Americans say they deeply trust their doctor.

One important way doctors can regrow that trust is to become educated about the types of medicine their patients want, including alternative therapies.

People are seeking new ways to care for their health. For instance, the percentage of U.S. adults doing yoga and mediating—while still a minority– rose dramatically between 2012 and 2017, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Likewise, the number of Americans taking dietary supplements including vitamins, minerals and natural therapies like turmeric, increased ten percentage points, to 75% in the past decade, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition. As Americans increasingly seek out non-pharmaceutical ways to address wellness, they need doctors who can talk to them about such alternatives.

Unfortunately, this is rare. As a provider of an holistic approach to health called Ayurvedic Medicine, I often see people who tell me their physician dismissed them when they asked about treatments they’d read about on the internet. In many cases, clients tell me their doctor has actually chastised them for entertaining an alternative approach to their existing illness. This leaves them disempowered. They wanted to make choices to improve their own health, but found they were not acknowledged, supported or even understood by the doctor.

The Dilemma of the Black Patient

Dec 5, 2019

By YOLONDA Y. WILSON, PhD

Last week a nurse posted a video of herself on Twitter mocking patients with the caption “We know when y’all are faking” followed by laughing emojis. Twitter responded with the hashtag #patientsarenotfaking, created by Imani Barbarin, and a slew of testimonials of negligent medical care. While the nurse’s video was not explicitly racialized, plenty in the black community felt a particular sting: there is clear evidence that this attitude contributes to the problem of black patients receiving substandard care, and that negative behavioral traits like faking or exaggerating symptoms are more likely to be attributed to black patients. The problem is so bad that it turns out racial bias is built right into an algorithm widely used by hospitals to determine patient need.

Since we can’t rely on the system or algorithms, many health organizations and the popular media encourage patients to advocate for themselves and their loved ones by, for example, asking questions, asking for second (or more) opinions, “trusting [their] guts,” and not being afraid to speak up for themselves or their loved ones. But this ubiquitous advice to “be your own advocate” doesn’t take into account that not all “advocacy” is interpreted in the same way—especially when the advocacy comes from a black person. Sometimes a patient’s self-advocacy is dismissed as “faking;” sometimes it is regarded as anger or hostility.

Black male faces showing neutral expressions are more likely than white faces to be interpreted as angry, violent, or hostile, while black women are often perceived as ill-tempered and angry. These stereotypes can have a chilling effect on a person’s decision to advocate for themselves, or it can prompt violent reaction.

Give One Minute to Add Healing into Healthcare

Nov 12, 2019• 1

By LISE ALSCHULER, ND, FABNO

I am a naturopathic doctor, and because I operate outside of insurance-based medicine, I have, what most healthcare providers would consider, lots of time with my patients. My typical first patient appointment is 90 minutes long and my follow-up visits are 30 minutes long.

What, you may ask, do I do with all this time? I get to know my patients by listening to their stories, their concerns and their hopes. We delve into their health concerns, we review their medical records, and we explore lifestyle-based strategies to optimize their healing and wellbeing.

In short, I listen and apply what I know in partnership with each patient with the goal of empowering them towards greater wellness. Over and over, I hear from my patients how unusual this is. They speak about the 5-minute visits with their doctors that feel rushed and disconnected. They express frustration and dismay about being a diagnosis, not a person, when seeing their healthcare providers.

A recent survey conducted by the New York Times found that two-thirds of Americans support some form of change to the current healthcare system and favor moving towards greater insurance coverage for all. My experience for almost 25 years leads me to conclude that underlying this vision of healthcare is a deep-seated desire for patients to be cared for and listened to.

Everyone Has a Part to Play in Ending Vaccine Hesitancy

Feb 12, 2019• 6

By FELICIA D. GOODRUM STERLING, PhD and HEIDI L. POTTINGER, DrPH, MPH, MA

The measles outbreak in Washington state this week has brought new attention to the anti-vaccine movement. In fact, the World Health Organization recently identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of top threats to global health. In the US, the number of unvaccinated children has quadrupled since 2001, enabling the resurgence of infectious diseases long-since controlled. In fact, the WHO claims a staggering 1.5 million deaths could be prevented worldwide by improved vaccination rates.

Amidst the media and public health outcry, a mystery persists: Why has vaccine hesitancy continued, despite years of vigorous debunking of shoddy science? The answer may lie in a deeply-rooted distrust of doctors and science.

One of the authors of this article, Dr. Pottinger, surveyed hundreds of Arizona parents, from schools with exemption rates greater than 10%, about their perceptions on vaccines. Pottinger and colleagues found the vast majority of the parents surveyed who delayed or chose not to vaccinate their children did so because of true personal beliefs and not convenience. Specifically, they tended to distrust physicians and information about vaccines or held misperceptions about health and disease, including the idea that immunity by natural infection is more effective or that vaccine-preventable diseases are not severe.

These beliefs, stoked by a fraudulent 2010 study, have proven almost impossible to shake—despite the fact that the debunked study, based on 12 children, was retracted due to serious ethical violations and scientific misrepresentation; authors cherry-picked and fabricated data, and the first author had undisclosed business interests in the vaccine industry.

The failure of many interventions to dispel misinformation demonstrates the power of a complex interaction of confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, distrust in data sources, and personal experiences and narratives. Taking them on requires that the healthcare community effectively spread the following messages.