Thursday, June 17, 2010
Why you should still see your doctor when you're not sick
This post by Andrew Schorr appeared at Better Health.
Experts say over 100,000 lives a year could be saved in the United States if patients focused more on preventive medicine. What is preventive medicine? What can you do in your everyday life that may make a long-term difference?
On this Patient Power program, you will hear from two board certified internists from the UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics in Western Washington. They will discuss how having an ongoing relationship with a primary care physician who you check in with regularly even when you're well gives you the best chance at staying healthy.
Dr. David Camitta and Dr. Edward Dy, both internists at the UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics, explain to listeners why it is important to know your family history and how this influences the types of screenings and vaccinations you will get. Both doctors address many concerns expressed by patients who have an aversion to regular visits to a primary care physician, including concerns about being lectured about their weight or chastised by their doctor for personal lifestyle choices like smoking. Dr. Camitta assures listeners that it is not a doctor's job to judge, and it is through maintaining an ongoing relationship with patients that these fears can often be assuaged.
When it comes to preventive medicine, Dr. Camitta comments that often patients give more attention to preventive maintenance on their cars than they do on their bodies and personal health. Most people take their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change because they want to make sure everything remains in working order. Dr. Camitta and Dr. Dy suggest if more patients took this approach to their health, a lot of medical problems could be alleviated. Find out about small lifestyle changes you can make and what you need to keep track of at home to help your primary care physician give you the best care possible.
Guests:
Edward Dy, M.D., Internal Medicine, UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics
David Camitta, M.D., Internal Medicine, UW Medicine Neighborhood Clinics
To listen to this "Patient Power Daily Dose" show, click here.
This post originally appeared on Better Health, a network of popular health bloggers brought together by Val Jones, MD. Better Health's mission is to support and promote health care professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the provider point of view on health care reform, science, research and patient care.
Labels: obesity, patient communication, prevention, primary care, screenings, smoking cessation
posted by the Better Health network at
2:00 PM
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Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
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infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
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DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
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Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
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John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
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physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
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Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
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I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
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informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
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William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
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David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
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Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
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KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
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MD
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Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
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Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
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Alexander M.
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More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
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David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
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Reflections of a Grady
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Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
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Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
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Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
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Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
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tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
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Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
1 Comments:
I have serious doubts about preventive medicine. Perhaps it can increase the quality of life, but it cannot save lives and may not save money. After all, preventive medicine cannot repeal death. No lives will be saved. Maybe death rates will drop for short time, but time will catch up. Some may die of Alzheimers rather than coronary disease but they will still die. And who costs more, the older person with dementia in a nursing home for years or someone who drops dead while shoveling snow? If preventive medicine could assure that we live till 90 and then drop from a catastrophic intracranial bleed, never knowing what hit us and costing essentially nothing, that would be great. But that's not the case. So perhaps a qualitative effect but not a quantitative one.
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