I wish my partner would carry his load. How do I get my kid to clean his room? She never cooks! How do I get her to talk to me? People in relationships complain and scold – expecting the other person to change and do whatever. Makes me cranky. Relationships are a two-way street in a setting with values, habits, and pressures. My kids once gave me a button for my hat: Cuz I’m the Dad. That’s Why! I have been resoundingly unsuccessful over 60+ years getting someone else to change at pretty much anything. Read More
People: What’s wrong with me? Should I tell the doctor? What does she want me to do? Can I afford it? Does it (will it) hurt? Can I (will I) still take care of my family (go to work, go out, have fun)? What happens next? How’m I doing now? Did it work? Did it help? What should I worry about? What should I do if it happens (again)?
Clinician: What’s on his mind? What’s wrong with him? What should I do next? Did it work? What do the tests tell me? What should he do next? Did he do it? Will he let me know? What is anyone else doing about it?
Questions, questions, questions. So many bumps in the road and detours in the health journey. Few maps, spotty GPS at best.
Essentially, the medical part of the health journey is 1. Finding out what’s going on (diagnose). 2. Plan care (What needs to happen, by whom, when? What do we expect to happen (outcome)? What could go wrong, how can we prevent it, and how will we deal with it if it happens?. 3. See if the plan worked. 4. If it didn’t, adjust, try something else.
We are each an experiment of one.
These days I’m fascinated by the planning care part. Neither the patient nor the clinician can plan care alone. They need each other and much support – family members, other professionals, technology, and most of all – communication.
Eventually, everyone plans care – usually over and over. Our health system doesn’t seem geared toward planning care. Ten minute infrequent visits between patient and clinician. Routines and technology that can’t handle the dynamic, constantly changing information flow of planning care. The information certainly isn’t easily available to everyone on the team when they need it. Few, if any, rules (standards) exist for patients putting information in.
People: When you speak with a clinician, agree upon a plan of care. Set up a way to ask questions as they come up and report on status, be it portal, email, phone, or keeping a journal.
Clinicians: Use the words plan of care. Write the plan down. Let your patients know how to communicate status and ask questions as they come up before the next visit.
Everyone: Expect your electronic health records to be able to record and track care planning.
As I learn more about and am sought out more as an expert in patient engagement, empowerment, and activation, I struggle to respond to the health-system centric definitions given by people thinking they are patient-centric or want to become patient centric. Stuff like, ‘How do we make patients feel like they were included in decision-making. I say, “wait a minute, think of it as if you were the guest in patients’ health care journeys.”
I first thought about being the guest in someone’s health care journey 25 years ago when I worked with my sister-in-law, Peggy Boland, a staff nurse in an Intensive Care Unit in Cobleskill, NY. She inspired and taught me much. She would knock on the doorway and ask if she could come in, even if the patient was unconscious. She’s say, “I’m going to turn you now. Ok with you?” She’d greet every person who came into a space she was in. She respected thresholds and personal space. A very busy person, caring for many people, she’d ask, “Is there anything I can do for you?” and do it or say, “I’ll be back in x minutes and do that.” She always made it her business to know family members and find out who would be the care partner in the ICU and at home. She included them in all activities, teaching how to help move, feed, and toilet the patient. “It’s good for you to know this, it’ll be easier than this when you get home, but harder than before you came in. Any questions?” She was proactively curious and helpful. She explained and taught all the time. At the beginning of each shift Peggy would meet with the patient and care partner, “Here’s what I have on my list to accomplish today. What’s on your list?” Then, “Ok, let’s do this, at that time.” Collaborative care planning. Read More
Last week I wrote about Leadership, the Gift That Keeps on Giving. Several e-mails asked about the challenge of leading a health team in the role of caregiver. Great question! A challenge of leading in a sometimes hostile confederacy of people who don’t even know they’re on a team. Same dilemma as the person who’s on the health journey plus leading when it’s not your life, but a loved one’s. Let’s make it crazier still, as caregiver, you might not want to lead, but there’s a vacuum sucking you in.
In my work life as a leader I see my role to attend to self-care of whole team, get stuff out of the team’s way so they can do their job, listen to what they need, advocate for them, keep them informed about the larger organization, set the tone and culture by example, delegate, keep things moving, plan for succession, and be trustworthy.
How does that help me as a caregiver? One thing I noticed about my mom during her last months – when alert she paid a lot of attention to the well-being of her team. As a caregiver leading that’s a challenge and maybe the most important job. The person you’re caring for may take self-care of the rest of the team as minor desertions. But the team can’t support unless they’re as well as possible in the midst of the stress. So I guess that the caregiver leader sets the tone of self-care by example. Getting stuff out of the way can mean helping to arrange schedules, transportation, meals, equipment, meds, and communication channels. When my son Mike was dying, we had a weekly family call, Friday’s at 7p where we reviewed the past week’s events, next week’s schedule of appointments, needs of everyone, divvied up work and figured out who to ask for what. People often come out of the woodwork to help, but don’t know how. They can be a pain if they don’t know. Given direction they’re a blessing. Read More
I attended the American Academy of Communication in Healthcare Conference in New Haven. The AACH is the professional home for all committed to improving communication and relationships in healthcare. About 200 people attended from US, Canada, Israel, Brazil, Belgium, Australia. Although most attendees were physicians, I met nurses, therapists, coaches, office managers, patients, sociologists, medical students, and researchers. A couple of very low-key sponsors but no vendors present. A pleasant relief. The conference was designed to maximize interaction, learn from each other, and build skills within work groups and special interest groups. Met several venerable experts. Very open and quite humble: We have a lot to learn. Especially about patient centeredness. Most exciting for me was a presentation by Sharon Schindler Rising, a nurse midwife, talking about Centering Groups – facilitated groups of 6-10 young moms/couples preparing for the impending birth of a child. A wonderful example of people-centered design with participants directing much of the flow of the monthly small groups. Professionals and services came to them. Groups often kept meeting on their own after the children reach one year old, sometimes for 8-10 years. New groups have been starting for decades. Evidence over that time showed significant increase in proportion of pregnancies going to full term and decrease in the proportion of low birth weight babies. One sad piece of the presentation was the description of the barrier caused by the advent of the electronic health record. One participant-generated practice had been for moms and dads to enter their own health data into the paper record: instant empowerment! Not so with electronic record. People could no longer enter their own data into the health record. Shadow records had to be created. Lord, I was crushed when I heard this. I participated in several subsequent discussions about the infrastructure and skill set that would be needed to spread the Centering Group model to other settings. Instant learning!! Read More
I’ve spent the week immersed in this communication dilemma in healthcare. As I’ve said before, I’m amazed that any communication occurs in healthcare – a constant unfolding Tower of Babel. Way too big of a topic. Let’s narrow (as the solar system is a narrowing of the universe) to communication across thresholds and boundaries. Some examples:
- Between clinicians (same profession, same agency, same department): such as nurse to nurse, doctor to doctor, shift to shift, day-to-day
- Between professionals (different profession, same agency, same department): such as nurse to doctor, therapist to doctor, counselor to nurse, paramedic to nurse)
- Between clinician and patient or family caregiver (within a hospital stay or clinic visit or community setting)
- Across departments or levels of care (inpatient, rehab, home, clinic, emergency, intensive and long-term care, are all levels of care) within a hospital, clinic, or system: such as clinician to clinician, direct care or support staff to anyone
- Across levels of care (everything in 4. above plus jail, homeless shelter, community residence, supported living) sometimes called discharge planning, care management, consultations, questions involving just about anyone in the center of care.
This week two of my readers described experiences of fractured communication with their clinicians. One reader, a person in acute treatment for overwhelming anxiety, found himself watching and feeling the effects of dueling clinicians with widely differing diagnoses, medication regimens, and styles of communication. A collaborative, listening, empathetic physician versus a paternalistic, blameful, arrogant physician. Both physicians practiced in the same organization but in adjacent levels of care (one inpatient and the other outpatient). They didn’t coordinate care – they didn’t even speak to each other. The person with acute anxiety had to muster energy to advocate for himself and seek help from his partner. To little effect. The other reader experienced a sickle-cell crisis in a hospital without a sickle-cell specialist. She couldn’t get pain medication known to work for her. She was classified as a drug seeker. The treating physician wouldn’t communicate with the specialist who had treated this reader successfully many times and managed her long-term care.
So many levels of outrage here. How is it that institutions, practices, and people working in these two programs don’t know about disrespect, poor communication skills and lack of coordination within? Does nobody raise a red flag? Where was the medical record? Where were the leaders? Read More
My friend, Phyllis, in Cleveland suggested I might be asking the wrong question: “What works for me when I’m scared and what doesn’t?” You may recall that readers who have been patients and caregivers have been adamant that this is a key piece of information that should be in the electronic health record, especially needed in the ER. In 5+ years of advocacy I’ve been unable to generate interest from IT wonks. Anyway, I was whining about my ineffectiveness to Phyllis.
So let’s break it down a bit more. I’ve never met anyone in an unexpected health situation who wasn’t scared. Scared looks like: startled, numb, stomach ache, sweating, heart racing, catastrophizing , panicked……
It’s good to know in advance what helps settles me down. Deep breaths, meditation, hold my hand, a good laugh, quiet, a walk, listening to John Lennon, my wife and family, more information, respect from those around me plus listening to me, Ativan. My mom needed a hand to hold, control, opera. My friend needs someone from his immediate family and information, reduced stimulus, quiet, to be kept warm, headphones with classical musical. We all can use something. The unexpected health care situation can vary. My chronic condition, MS, could flare up – known yet unexpected. You could break your leg – an accident plus pain. You could have a heart attack or kidney stones – sudden, debilitating, with pain. You could be alone or with someone you trust – very different scenarios. Read More
225 weekly blog posts. How do I do it?, a reader recently asked me. The health journey provides me endless material: fascination, intrigue, tragedy, empathy, frustration, wonder, curiosity, fear, and inspiration. As a nurse I’m blessed to participate in some of people’s most intimate moments as a guide, helper, ear, hand holder, and translator. As a team member and leader I study the puzzle of how people think, emote, decide, and relate trying to get anything done safely and ethically in the most consuming, illogical, nonsensical, complex system imaginable. My palette includes the desire and dilemma of habit change, the tangled web of cultures, the enticing potential and hype of technology, the flood and inaccessibility of data, the vital impossibility of policy change, and the insane contradiction of money surrounding, driving, tempting, confounding health. Can I tease out the simple and illusive filaments of the magic levers of best health? What works, how do we know? How do we find, share, and use evidence? How is uncertainty communicated, how does information about groups of people relate to me, a single person? I love sharing my broad and thin knowledge of health as a coach and a writer. As a person on my own health journey, writing this blog stokes my fire – feeding and renewing my pathological optimism. Actually, I start with a nut of an idea, sit down with that idea on Sunday and write. Takes about an hour. I used to read the drafts to my mom, now my wife. It never turns out the way I think it will. The post writes itself. I’m an old hippie – at the end of the day the health journey is a roller coaster of love. Thanks for the ride. See you next week.
This week my son, Mike Funk, would have been 40. Lord, I miss you, Mike. You still inspire me. You’d be proud of your seasoning family.
Last time I saw my Primary Care Provider I asked if I needed to keep taking my Crestor, a drug to reduce cholesterol. She pulled out the clinical practice guideline for the treatment of blood cholesterol released by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. Every couple of years I ask her the same question. Do I really need this? Does it have long-term side effects I should worry about? I’m 63 years old, when can I stop because I’m too old? With insurance it costs me $300 a year out-of-pocket.
How many clinical practice guidelines are there? I could find no specific count – thousands I’m sure. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)’s National Guideline Clearinghouse lists 1975 guidelines.
Who writes guidelines? What is the evidence to support guidelines? Which guidelines apply to me? How often do guideline writers rewrite them when new evidence comes to light? How long does it take for people at the center to become aware of guidelines and use them? Read More