Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

America's Health Worker Mismatch

In the U.S., we rely on foreign-trained physicians, nurses and other professionals to care for our citizens.  Our professional schools have not taken on the responsibility of traing health care workers in sufficient numbers.  An Op-Ed essay in the NY Times (September 14, 2012) discusses this topic and concludes:  "It is irrational and immoral to recruit health workers from countries where one in five children die before their fifth birthday when we could be recruiting and training workers domestically."

Please read this informative article:  "Health Worker Mismatch."

My Mother-in-Law’s One High Day

When my mother-in-law was in the final, harrowing throes of pancreatic cancer, she had only one good day, and that was the day she smoked pot.  Read this thoughtful, sad piece from the NY Times Journal of Medicine (12/10/11).

Bring Medical Care Home!

Jack Resnik, a physician practicing on Roosevelt Island, New York, had an eloquent and impassioned Op-Ed piece in the December 5, NY Times.

"[In 1998], one of my patients called me with a high fever, chills and dropping blood pressure. He was 48 and had been a quadriplegic since he was shot during a robbery in the hardware store he owned. I called an ambulance and admitted him to the hospital, where we soon brought his urinary tract infection under control. But he developed a bedsore, which became infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that breeds in hospitals. He didn’t survive the hospitalization."

Dr. Resnick has learned a few things since then.  Read:  Bring Health Care Home.  It may save your life!!

Help One Robin

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.         Emily Dickinson

"Doors Swinging Open" by Frank Bruni, in the September 27, NY Times, is a story that brings the Dickinson poem to mind.  It chronicles the journey of Energy Maburutse, a young man with osteogenesis imperfecta from rural  Zimbabwe, to Lynn University in Florida. 

Voices on Health Care

On Wednesday, September 9, there was a fine editorial in the Times by Anna Deavere Smith, an actress and playwright who is also a professor at New York University.

"Over the last few years, in preparation for a new play, I interviewed doctors, patients and healers about the human body, its resilience and its vulnerability. Although our conversations were not primarily about the health care debate, they do reveal many of the feelings and thoughts of the people in the audience President Obama will address tonight.

The unruliness that now animates the conversation stems from our passions, hopes and discomforts — about life, death, who should (or should not) take care of us and whom we should take care of. The president’s audience has a million and one perspectives, some of them clumping together like blood platelets under one political roof or another. The following excerpts (not all of which are in my play) reflect the range of views.

Obama's Audience Speaks. This Op-Ed piece is stimulating and important.

Cuban Healthcare Invasion

On August 4, 2009 an interesting article appeared in the NY Times: "Doctors in Cubs Start over ihe U.S."   It  addresses the fact that while Cuban doctors have been fleeing to South Florida since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 the pace intensified after 2006, when the Department of Homeland Security  began a program that allowed Cuban medical personnel “who study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government” to travel to the United States legally. The program has effectively turned a crowning achievement of Cuba’s foreign policy on its head.

The bottom line is that Cuba may have more physicians than it needs, so it has to farm some of them out to countries in South and Central America, Africa and S.E. Asia.  ThisTimes article is well-worth reading.One of the protagonists is a physician (pictured here) who works as a nurse administrator in a hospice in Florida.  His salary is > $100,000 per year.  In Cuba it would have been ~ $300 per year.  The article raises many questions.

If Doctors Had More Time To Listen

by Julie Weed  NY Times June 6, 2009

To read, go to Permalink .

This is a thought-provoking piece.  I am not a fan of boutique practices, but we definitely need to give patients TIME.

It's the platonic ideal of the Free Doctor and Free Patient. Download Plato Physician  .

A Silent Epidemic

"Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

Most of the deaths are preventable, with basic obstetrical care. Tanzania, with roughly 13,000 deaths annually, has neither the best nor the worst record in Africa. Although it is politically stable, it is also one of the world’s poorest countries, suffering from almost every problem that contributes to high maternal death rates — shortages of doctors, nurses, drugs, equipment, roads and transportation."

This is an important article in the Sunday, May 24, 2009 NY Times.

It is a topic which Kim Gutschow covered in her course "Williams Reproduces" Spring 2009.  We will ask Kim and some of her students to comment. 

See post on obstetrical fistulae and also the fine documentary "A Walk to Beautiful." 

Photo from Radio Free Europe web site.

A Little Help From My Friends

"In the quest for better health, many people turn to doctors, self-help books or health supplements.  But they overlook a powerful weapon that could help them fight illness and depression, speed recovery, slow aging and prolong life: their friends. Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health." 

Tara Parker-Pope, in the NY Times, tells us how important friendships may be in the quest for health.  Research has shown that in many cases they are more important for longevity and health than visits to the doctor. 

What Are Friends For? is an important piece that is well-referenced and worth reading.

So, the Beatles got it right:

I get by with a little help from my friends,
I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends
I get high with a little help from my friends

Friendship Quotes

A Caregiver's Story

Nell Burger Kirst, a 4th year medical student at the University of Michigan, tells a memorable and important story in the March 31st New York Times: Comforter and Comforted relates the story of a person who is called to be a "care giver."  Little is written about this important human subspecies, yet they are the substructure of the entire health care system.  Some are unlikely candidates. 

Please read Nell's vignette.  It's a keeper!