The Patient Will See You Now

An issue in the medical world today is that expensive tests and procedures are being done unnecessarily. In his article “Overkill” Atul Gawande, surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, and a professor in the department of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health argues that as someone in the medical profession he sees how unnecessary some medical procedures are. “The researchers called it “low-value care.” But, really, it was no-value care” (Gawande). Many people today are easily influenced by the power of the internet it’s as easy as googling a symptom and and coming up with a diagnosis and going into doctors offices and demanding a test or procedure, what these people don’t know is the cost of these tests

Accompanying with the enormous technological progress, medicine as a modern science has been affected in many positive ways. However, the timeless tradition and the everlasting secret of medicine is merely care giving. Modern medicine has been relying too much on technology, which is cool, but also very cold from a humanistic aspect. All the patients are presented by a series of numbers via binary signals of the internet. Nowadays, medicine is more about running tests and diagnosing based on numbers, as opposed to investigating symptoms upon the physician’s observational skills and comprehensive knowledge. As bedside caring becomes less concerned as it was in the old days, the diminishing of the sense of caring in medical professionals appears as a side effect. There is no doubt that technology enables medical professionals to perform all types of fancy tasks, though it is their offering of compassion that comforts the patients the most. And this quintessence of medical practice ought not to be overlooked at any point of the history of medicine.

Quality health care is an issue in America for everyone, despite our numerous tests and advances in technology. In his article, “Overkill,” Atul Gawande argues against a common assumption that our healthcare system is the best because of these medical advances. In fact, Gawande claims that our health care provides much unnecessary care that often causes harm and that costs a lot . He follows that claim by redefining “low-value care” as “no-value care” and provides considerable scientific data along with his own experience with his own patients to support his claim. He also states logical reasons by referring to expert authorities who critique our health care by viewing it from an economic perspective: like talking about information asymmetry where a doctor is more informed than the patient, thus the doctor has more power over the patient. All of these emphases strongly defend his controversial claim. But what stands out most is how Gawande uses several stories showing vastly different outcomes, depending on how informed the patient and doctor are including offering non invasive treatments. We need to explore how his unusual storytelling strategy exposes how surgeons and patients should care more about quality than the mere quantity of tests and what alternatives are available to change the unnecessary over testing and over-diagnosis which prevent good health care.

An ever growing problem in today's society are “medical advances” that end up not making things better for the user. For example there is an application for a smartphone that lets one take a photo of an injury. However people have to wait a long time for an anonymous person to give back results of a possible life threatening injury. People are shifting from a personal visit with a doctor, that can examine a wound better in person, to behind computer screen projecting inaccurate results. Another repercussion of these apps are that people are not seeing a doctor that they can be personal with and know about their medical past. *****Ray Bradbury had a part in his story where the character Montag faces this, "Neither of

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee is not just a book about cancer; it is a story about one disease’s ability to change the course of humanity. My father handed me the book when I was thirteen, and it changed the way I thought about medicine. This new perspective complemented my fascination with maps, which allowed me to understand the many places and people I could never see. After years of flipping through atlases and reading about cancer in my father’s office, I realized the remarkable role doctors have had in pushing the progression of the human race. I quickly became infatuated with medicine and its impact on the world. From stepping into the emergency room at my local hospital to see the effect of medicine on people first-hand to presenting a website about

Advancements in technology have made it possible for people to access medical information, communicate with their doctor, manage and track diseases, seek help, and maintain anonymity. Technology has facilitated the tracking of medical information, for example, Kaiser Permanente uses a computerized system to store and track patient information. Any doctor in a

Physicians ironically may seek the progression of initially manageable diseases, such as type-2 diabetes or heart disease, so that the patient eventually falls at the mercy of costly procedures in order to survive. Doctors “charge per action, diagnostic or curative, taken on the part of a patient,” which provides much greater short and long-term monetary rewards in comparison to immediate communicative prevention. (El-Sayed) Medical students typically enter the field thousands of dollars in debt due to extensive educational costs and are keen to choosing the most profitable fields, such as surgery. However, this hefty profit relies on straying patients “away from primary care, where disease prevention can happen, toward specialty care that is ultimately more expensive and less efficient.” (El-Sayed) Patients are to suffer unnecessary medical and financial burdens at the hands of individuals whose supposed moral purpose is to alleviate such problems in the name of their

As described by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book Complications, medicine “is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge… fallible individuals” making medicine different from other scientific fields

Within this case study I am going to use two of the Chapelhow et al. (2005) enablers to discuss and reflect on the care of a patient I have been involved with on placement over a period of 5 weeks. ‘Enablers are the essential and underpinning skills that come together to provide expert professional practice’ (Chapelhow, C et al. 2005, p.2). These include; assessment, communication, documentation, risk, professional decision making and managing uncertainty. The enablers work together to provide a holistic approach to the care of patients in health care settings. I am going to focus on and discuss two of the enablers, linking them both together, which will be assessment and communication as I believe these two enablers can be related most to my patient.

     In today’s society, people are gaining medical knowledge at quite a fast pace. Treatments, cures, and vaccines for various diseases and disorders are being developed constantly, and yet, coronary disease remains the number one killer in the world.

As a small child, I had seen the agony of patients and limitations of medical profession in dealing with various illnesses. I had innumerable queries which were beyond my capability to understand

Personal health and wellbeing is important to everyone and being able to diagnose potential diseases early on is crucial to preventative care, therefore, patients should have full access to their DNA analysis as well as health reports. Having data on DNA analysis allows an individual to mentally and physically prepare for a particular disease or illness and helps them proactively find a treatment for the disease. The book The Patient Will See You Now by Eric Topol discussed about a woman named Elena Simon, who developed a rare type of liver cancer called “fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma” which affects about 200 young people yearly. Elena ultimately worked with her surgeon to sequence the tumor specimen and discovered a gene mutation present in the disease. This discovery was then utilized to

In observation, (Fahnestock, McComb, & Deshmukh, 2013) stated "Information technologies are transforming the way healthcare is delivered. Innovations such as computer-based patient records, hospital information systems, computer-based decision support tools, community health information networks and new ways of distributing health information.” (p.3.2). In the sector of delivering healthcare using technology, has made it easier for healthcare professionals to access medical records, digitization of prescriptions and view test results. With the use of high-performance devices being used in the hospital, helps to make the jobs of healthcare professionals a little easier. As well as relieve anxiety from anxious patients that may be awaiting lab results to come back. Therefore, IT devices and services has been and continues to be a tremendous help and game changer for the healthcare system. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to help shape and reform the healthcare

Abraham Verghese is a medical practitioner that had grown acustom to unorthodox ways of medical practioning that had been widely used by doctors long before the advancement offered by technical medical supplies and expertise. Though he is learning to accept the multitude of advancements that are becoming availabe to the wide variety of cases to be treated he is still used to the "old school" ways of having bedside manners that could inform doctors better if not equal to what information is displayed on a computer screen. Verghese has argued that bedside manners are becoming that of an ancient relic of medical practioning becuase of computers and technology that hold data for an "icon" instead of a living person, in this way that he argues it is seen as a old lifestyle that is being put out to pasture and being replaced by a tech phenomenom that is considered to be a major leap to saving lives. Abraham Verghese is in awe of the history that is being sweapt underneath the metaphorical rug as this new modern technoogy takes its place, taking place of useful strategies that were available before the help of a machine.

This excitement can be good, bad or in some cases, misleading. The medical field has vastly made its way into a huge money pit of enduring “technological advances”. But, the advances are sometimes not always what they seem to be. Looking ahead, the questions we need to ask ourselves would be: are we getting to excited too quickly when it comes to the amount of anticipation we have about the advances in the medical field? Is there a chance we look for the potential of these “revenge effects” with it all? While trying to discover an answer to these questions, I feel as though people need to take a step back and realize that we will never know right now, what these advances will do for us in the near future whether its change us negatively or positively. Harmful or safe, watchfulness should always be done when it comes to medical technology. Thankfully, the knowledge and skills used with the equipment, has and will continue to save millions and millions of lives now and in the future. The diagnosis of new vaccines and miracle drugs has increased the existence of this population by about twenty years.