Category Archives: culture

Just Do It My Butt

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Happy late Monday, all!

Continuing my critical analysis of our American medical system…  This is not what I set out to do on November 1, I swear, and I have other more interesting prompts to expound on after today, I promise.  For now, thank you for indulging me in this rant of sorts:

My friend posted this article today, explaining how most methods of trying to get people to take their medications do not work.  It cited this meta-analysis, which concluded that “Current methods of improving medication adherence for chronic health problems are mostly complex and not very effective, so that the full benefits of treatment cannot be realized.”  It also reviewed findings from another study, concluding that, “A compound intervention integrating wireless pill bottles, lottery-based incentives, and social support did not significantly improve medication adherence or vascular readmission outcomes for AMI [acute myocardial infarction—heart attack] survivors.”  The piece basically asserts that behavioral economics, or the art and science of ‘nudging,’ will not by itself heal what ails our behaviors, despite what Thaler and Sunstein suggest.

The discussion on my friend’s page then centered around ideas like motivational interviewing, coaching, and the like—methods that have been shown to improve likelihood of overcoming addiction, obesity, and other behavioral maladies.  It occurred to me that this is the best part of my work: asking the important questions to help patients identify meaning and intrinsic motivation for behavior change, and collaborating in such a way that they own the plan because they have an authentic hand in crafting it.   And even then it can take years for new, healthier habits to entrain, because we are complex beings each with myriad influences affecting our actions at any given time.  When I can sit and listen to what makes meaning for my patients (if they know—if they don’t then it can get really interesting or really not, it’s hit or miss), and talking about what the future might look and feel like with a few relevant changes, I bask in my professional heaven.

But who can actually do this in the modern American healthcare system??  It takes time, and as we all know, time is money.  It also takes training and resources.  We are not born knowing how to perform motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy, and even today, these skills are not necessarily mainstream medical school curriculum (well if we’re being honest, communication skills in general are still given short shrift, which boggles me).  Physicians can and do learn these skills. But they don’t necessarily have to.  Medical systems which include dieticians, exercise physiologists, and health psychologists can deploy these team members to support patients in their health journeys.  But does your doctor’s office have this kind of set up?  Does your insurance pay for these services?

Most likely the answer is no.  It’s shocking and dismaying, because this approach is proven to be successful in important ways.  I refer here to the Diabetes Prevention Program.  This study was published 15 years ago, on February 7, 2002, in the New England Journal of Medicine.  From the link, here is the study design summary:

“…Participants from 27 clinical centers around the United States were randomly divided into different treatment groups. The first group, called the lifestyle intervention group, received intensive training in diet, physical activity, and behavior modification. By eating less fat and fewer calories and exercising for a total of 150 minutes a week, they aimed to lose 7 percent of their body weight and maintain that loss.

“The second group took 850 mg of metformin twice a day. The third group received placebo pills instead of metformin. The metformin and placebo groups also received information about diet and exercise but no intensive motivational counseling.

“All 3,234 study participants were overweight and had prediabetes, which are well-known risk factors for the development of type 2 diabetes. In addition, 45 percent of the participants were from minority groups-African American, Alaska Native, American Indian, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, or Pacific Islander-at increased risk of developing diabetes.”

What do you think happened?

“Participants in the lifestyle intervention group-those receiving intensive individual counseling and motivational support on effective diet, exercise, and behavior modification-reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 58 percent. This finding was true across all participating ethnic groups and for both men and women. Lifestyle changes worked particularly well for participants aged 60 and older, reducing their risk by 71 percent. About 5 percent of the lifestyle intervention group developed diabetes each year during the study period, compared with 11 percent of those in the placebo group.

“Participants taking metformin reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 31 percent. Metformin was effective for both men and women, but it was least effective in people aged 45 and older. Metformin was most effective in people 25 to 44 years old and in those with a body mass index of 35 or higher, meaning they were at least 60 pounds overweight. About 7.8 percent of the metformin group developed diabetes each year during the study, compared with 11 percent of the group receiving the placebo.”

Lifestyle modification surpassed medication alone in preventing progression to overt diabetes in these high risk patients—almost double the benefit.  Well duh, you say, we all knew that.  We just need to eat less and move more.  But did these people ‘Just Do It?’  As if we can wake up one day and open a shiny new box of motivation that suddenly removes all of our circumstantial, emotional, and habitual barriers to optimal health?  No.  These patients were intensely supported by a dedicated, multidisciplinary team, day in and day out, for the long haul.  Every week patients reject my team’s offers to explore strategy for habit change, saying, “I know what I need to do, I just have to do it.”  Seriously, if it were that easy we’d all be doing it already (she screams as she pulls her hair out in knotted handfuls).

So, if this unequivocal study came out a decade and a half ago, why have we not implemented its procedure in primary care practices across the country?  I’ll wait while you think it over…

It’s money, of course, right?

It’s not that people in charge of healthcare spending don’t care about patients.  It’s that the financial returns of such an investment occur too far in the future to make for a good P&L calculation today.  Most insurance companies do not cover patients for the long run, so why should I expend all these resources to get you healthy today, so you can be healthy later and cost Medicare less many years from now?  The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me to have a single payer system that can truly invest in our health, as a population of individuals, from birth to death.  And since habits and behaviors are established at very early stages of development, doesn’t it also make sense to have the medical/healthcare system integrated with the education system?  If we are a nation dedicated to the health and well-being of children so they can become healthy and well adults, why would we allow junk food in our schools and cut physical education?  What private, for-profit entity in its right capitalist mind would want to take that on?

Well, I trust you get my point.  It’s late and I have committed to writing every day this month, so I must stop here tonight.  Thank you again for your indulgence as I strode into the weeds on this one.

Hope to see you back tomorrow!

 

Eat What You Kill

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NaBloPoMo 2017: Field Notes from a Life in Medicine

Sounds like a mantra from a survival reality show, right?  Akin to “Eat or be Eaten,” “Kill or Be Killed.”  It’s also a common reference to the prevailing business model in our American scarcity-minded, competition-driven, fee-for-service healthcare culture.  How ironic, the application of these words to this profession.  It was explained to me essentially as, “Every man for himself, and you’re a minion.  You are expected to be ‘productive’ in this business to justify your compensation and contribute to the bottom line.  We measure productivity by number of patients seen and accompanying collections.  Pull your own weight or there will be consequences.”

Of course, from a capitalist business standpoint, this makes sense.  I provide a service that others require.  I should offer it widely, accommodate customer expectations and demands, expand my suite of offerings early and often, and charge for everything.  The more I can get customers to consume and pay, the better off my business.  I have a fundamental problem with this approach when the practice of medicine focuses on business first and patient care second.  Nobody admits to this attitude, of course it’s about patients first, everybody says.  Then my colleague makes a suggestion for patient care improvement, or I express concern about conveyor belt medicine burning doctors out.  Inevitably, the primary response from leadership is something along the lines of ‘that costs too much,’ and ‘that’s the only way to keep the lights on.’  I understand the math.  I despise the premise.

Medicine and healthcare delivery should always transcend the detached, transactional, and ruthless nature of the free market.  Chris Ladd, a conservative thinker and writer, describes this idea eloquently here.  It occurred to me today, replying to Stacey Holley’s comment on my post about spending time with patients, that even those who profit from our flawed American system are also terminally distressed by it.  Insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and their executives live in a constant state of fight-or-flight defensive posturing, fearing for their livelihoods in market share, revenue, solvency, and survival.  How tragically ironic.

Personally, I have difficulty envisioning a single-payer, government run healthcare program as the primary delivery system in the United States.  Our culture is simply far too individualistic, too fundamentally ingrained with ‘every man for himself.’  However, I think we can still work with the concept of universal healthcare, wherein all people have access to basic preventive and catastrophic care, regardless of income or status, without risk of bankruptcy.  A strong argument can be made that the only entity who could or should be truly invested in the health and well-being of all of us, throughout our lifespan, is our government, particularly in the realms of prevention and health maintenance.  We just need to loosen our societal grip on ‘that’s just how it works,’ and ‘I need to get mine,’ and allow ourselves to be led more by our collaborative, altruistic, and humanitarian leanings.  In my experience, diverse groups of intelligent and energetic people, working toward ambitious and aspirational goals, generate synergy.  This kind of cooperation fosters passion, joy, inspired creativity,  and magnificent innovation.  Who knows what novel solutions we may invent, if we only put down our spears and work together?  And isn’t that the hallmark of American ingenuity?

Medicine and health should be a heartening, collaborative, communal effort wherein we all do our best to help ourselves and each other reach our highest potential.  We are better than our current system, in which truly everybody suffers more than necessary.  I refuse to accept ‘Eat What You Kill’ as any kind of descriptor for my work or that of my colleagues.  We can do better, imagine and create more for ourselves and one another, than this primitive notion.  I know there’s a healthier mantra inside me somewhere…

What can you think of?

Whole Physician Health: Standing at the Precipice

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I published the post below two years ago, and all of it applies even more so today. This week I presented to my department chairs and hospital administration leaders on the importance of addressing physician burnout and well-being. There is a growing sense of urgency around this, some even starting to call it a crisis.

Still, I feel hopeful. Darkest before the dawn, right? Reveal it to heal it, my wise friend says. Physician burnout research has exposed and dissected the problem for 20 years, and now we shift our attention toward solutions.

I will attend the American Conference on Physician Health and the CENTILE Conference next month. I cannot wait to commune with my tribe again, explore and learn, and return to my home institution with tools to build our own program of Whole Physician Health. While we focus on physician health in its own right, we must always remember that it can never be achieved without strong, tight, and fierce connections with all of our fellow caregivers. When we attain this, all of us, especially our patients, are elevated and healed.

Onward, my friends. More to come soon.

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Ever since my presentation to the American College of Surgeons earlier this month on personal resilience in a medical career, I cannot shake the feeling that we need to do more of this work. Physicians from different fields need to talk more to one another, share experiences, and reconnect. We also need to include other members of the care team as equals, and let go the hierarchical thinking that has far outlived its usefulness.

I do not suggest that physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists and others should play interchangeable roles in the care of patients. Rather, similar to the central tenet of gender equality, the unique contributions of each team member need to be respected equally for their own merits and importance. As a primary care internist, I must admit that I have seen my professional world through a rather narrow lens until now. I confess that I live at Stage 3, according to David Logan and colleagues’ definition of Tribal Leadership and culture. The mantra for this stage of tribal culture, according to Logan et al, is “I’m great, and you’re not.” Or in my words, “I’m great; you suck.”

“I’m a primary care doctor and I am awesome. I am the true caregiver. I sit with my patients through their hardest life trials, and I know them better than anyone. I am on the front line, I deal with everything! And yet, nobody values me because ‘all’ I do is sit around and think. My work generates only enough money to keep the lights on (what is up with that, anyway?); it’s the surgeons and interventionalists who bring in the big bucks — they are the darlings of the hospital, even though they don’t really know my patients as people…” It’s a bizarre mixture of pride and whining, and any person or group can manifest it.

Earlier this fall, Joy Behar of TV’s “The View” made an offhand comment about Miss Colorado, Kelley Johnson, a nurse, wearing ‘a doctor’s stethoscope,’ during her monologue at the Miss America pageant. We all watched as the media shredded the show and its hosts for apparently degrading nurses. What distressed me most was the nurses vs. doctors war that ensued on social media. Nurses started posting how they, not doctors, are who really care for patients and save lives. Doctors, mostly privately, fumed at the grandiosity and perceived arrogance of these posts. It all boiled down to, “We’re great, they suck. We’re more important, look at us, not them.” The whole situation only served to further fracture an already cracked relationship between doctors and nurses, all because of a few mindless words.

It’s worth considering for a moment, though. Why would nurses get so instantly and violently offended by what was obviously an unscripted, ignorant comment by a daytime talk show host? It cannot be the first time one of them has said something thoughtlessly. What makes any of us react in rage to someone’s unintentional words? It’s usually when the words chafe a raw emotional nerve. “A doctor’s stethoscope.” The implicit accusation here is that nurses are not worthy of using doctors’ instruments. And it triggered such ferocious wrath because so many nurses feel that they are treated this way, that they are seen as inferior, subordinate, unworthy. Internists feel it as compared to surgeons. None would likely ever admit to feeling this way, consciously, at least. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that we all have that secret gremlin deep inside, who continually questions, no matter how outwardly successful or inwardly confident we may be, whether we are truly worthy to be here. And when someone speaks directly to it, like Joy Behar did, watch out, because that little gremlin will rage, Incredible Hulk-style.

I see so many similarities to the gender debate here. As women, in our conscious minds, we know our worth and our contribution. We know we have an equal right to our roles in civilization. And, at this point in our collective human history, we feel the need to defend those roles, to fight for their visibility and validity. More and more people now recognize that women need men to speak up for gender equality, that it’s not ‘just a women’s issue,’ but rather a human issue, and that all of us will live better, more wholly, when all of us are treated with equal respect and opportunity. The UN’s He for She initiative embodies this ideal.

It’s no different in medicine. At this point in our collective professional history, physician-nurse and other hierarchies still define many of our relationships and operational structures. It’s not all bad, and we have made great progress toward interdisciplinary team care. But the stethoscope firestorm shows that we still have a long way to go. At the CENTILE conference I attended last week, I hate to admit that I was a little surprised and incredulous to see inspiring and groundbreaking research presented by nurses. I have always thought of myself as having the utmost respect for nurses — my mom, my hero, is a nurse. The ICU and inpatient nurses saved me time and again during my intern year, when I had no idea what I was doing. And I depended on them to watch over my patients when I became an attending. But I still harbored an insidious bias that nurses are not scholarly, that they do not (or cannot?) participate in the ‘higher’ academic pursuits of medicine. I stand profoundly humbled, and I am grateful. From now on I will advocate for nurses to participate in academic medicine’s highest activities, seek their contributions in the literature, and voice my support out loud for their important roles in our healthcare system.

We need more conferences like this, more forums in which to share openly all of our strengths and accomplishments. We need to Dream Big Together, to stop comparing and competing, and get in the mud together, to cultivate this vast garden of health and well-being for all. I’ll bring my shovel, you bring your hose, someone else has seeds, another, the soil, and still others, the fertilizer and everything else we will need for the garden to flourish. We all matter, and we all have a unique role to play. Nobody is more important than anyone else, and nobody can do it alone.

We need to take turns leading and following. That is how a cooperative tribe works best. It’s exhausting work, challenging social norms and moving a culture upward. And we simply have to; it’s the right thing to do.