Doctor's Digest

Today we realize that communication skills can be taught, and learning them is not about being a nicer doctor; it’s about being a better doctor. The first formal studies of patient communications were done about thirty years ago, and they have slowly led to enormous changes in the medical school curriculum.

With the advent of consumer-driven healthcare, or CDHC, your patients may now find themselves in the unique position of making a lot more of their own medical decisions than in the past. The questions then arise: how prepared are patients to assume this responsibility? And how can they get the information they need to help them choose healthcare?

The American health insurance system faces the vexing challenge of supporting high-quality medical care while trying to control rising costs. In recent years, physicians have had to cope with an alphabet soup of insurance innovations, from HMOs and PPOs to DRGs and RBVUs. And now there’s still another ingredient in the mix: CDHC.

Are your patients turning into consumers? For a lot of people, the word “patient” implies sub-servience, while the word “consumer” acknowledges the important role that people can play inchoosing their own healthcare. Since physicians think of themselves as healers rather than sales people, this shift in terminology may represent a pretty revolutionary change in the way patients and physicians interact.

Volunteering is a wonderful way for a physician to reach new heights of personal satisfaction and growth. The reasons for volunteering are as diverse as the people who do it. Their main motive is usually to help other people, but there are plenty of other benefits as well.

Stress management experts are seeing consistent signs of stress among medical personnel, including marriage troubles, overeating, and physical problems like insomnia, headaches, and lower back pain. One thing you can count on: the stress of practicing medicine will always be there. So it’s going to be up to you to recharge your battery on a daily basis.

Although we're all familiar with the health benefits, exercise is a hard sell within the physician community. There's just not enough time in the day for it, we tell ourselves with a shrug, and we let it go at that. But there are ways that you can fit exercise into your daily routine no matter how busy you are, if you just make up your mind to do it.

What does your office need to do to prepare for an emergency? The answer to that question will depend on the structure and focus of your particular practice. Obviously, an ambulatory surgery center will have more complicated needs than a small outpatient practice. But the important thing is to ask yourself various contingency questions, such as this: How would we contact our patients if they were suddenly forced to leave town? And how would we access patient records if our office had to shut down?

No preparedness plan can ignore the fact that, in an emergency, some staff members may be less accessible, less able, or even less willing to shoulder the burden than others. A recent study of over six thousand healthcare workers analyzed willingness to respond versus ability to respond. The study found that healthcare workers would be most willing to help out in a mass casualty incident or an environmental disaster. They would be least willing to respond to a smallpox epidemic, a radiological event, or an outbreak of SARS.

Polls have shown that nearly three-quarters of the American public are concerned that there may be another terrorist attack. Yet nearly two-thirds of the population have made no emergency plans. That’s one of many reasons why it’s important for you to develop an emergency plan for your own practice.

Exactly how you decide to apply EBM will vary greatly depending on the size and nature of your practice.

Evidence-based databases offer time-saving efficiency and a reliable shortcut to reach the latest and most pertinent evidence you need in making decisions for your patients.

EBM gives physicians a reliable framework for explaining medical information to patients. EBM can also work in the opposite way: it can help you explain to your patient why a treatment that worked for his friend may not be suitable for him.

Once a physician makes the decision to scale back to part-time, the question becomes how to do it.

CME can also offer doctors a chance to stay clinically current, challenged, and invigorated.

Beyond physician burnout-the best course is to avoid burnout in the first place.