I had diagnosed "abdominal pain" when the real problem was hunger; I confused social issues with medical problems in other patients, too. I mislabeled the hopelessness of long-term unemployment as depression and the poverty that causes patients to miss pills or appointments as noncompliance. In one older patient, I mistook the inability to read for dementia. My medical training had not prepared me for this ambush of social circumstance.
Real-life obstacles had an enormous impact on my patient's lives, but because I had neither the skills nor the resources for treating them, I ignored the social context of disease altogether....
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Funding-healthy-society-helps-cure-health-care-3177542.php#ixzz2OkRE4q4X
Posts
5 principles for protecting physician reputation
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Health care workers understand the power of a record. One sentence in a
medical chart can follow a patient for years. A diagnosis, a risk label, or
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