Bluegrassisp.com

Among the spineless liberals, there’s always worry about the number of people walking around with guns. Thank God for the NRA being in support of the right of all citizens being allowed to be armed to the teeth just in case there’s a call to join a militia. We can all sleep safer in our beds. And as a perfect example of how to approach problem-solving with the help of a gun, we can’t do better than travel over to Michigan. So here comes the facts. Kathy lost her job. It was nothing exciting. Just disposing of hazardous waste. Then, about a month ago, one of her dogs took her by surprise and, with an unexpected lunge, seriously damaged her shoulder. There was just one problem. With the loss of her job, she had lost her health insurance. So what does a practical woman do when she can’t afford the treatment and she’s in severe pain?

Well, Kathy was staying with her in-laws and, as is the way of folk in small towns, they were the proud owners of some guns. As Kathy put it, the emergency room needs to see a life-threatening situation, so she decided to give them one. With impressive bravery, she took a gun and shot herself in her already injured shoulder. When the deed was done, her mother-in-law called in a shooting and the ambulance came. As she was spirited off to hospital, the police joined up the dots and concluded a self-inflicted wound. (more…)

One of the building blocks of medical treatment is the need for the patient (that’s you) to consent to whatever treatment is proposed. Hopefully, the doctor gives you a good explanation of the all costs and benefits, and this allows you to make a properly informed decision. The problems with this in the real world come on both sides of the equation. Some doctors act as if they walk on water and you should do whatever they tell you and be grateful they were actually prepared to speak to you. Some patients come with prejudices and, no matter what the doctor tells them, they don’t want to hear anything that conflicts with their own beliefs. In the middle come the doctors who are bad at explaining and the patients who struggle to understand. The result is that many pain management clinics fail to give a comprehensive and satisfactory range of treatments to every patient, i.e. many patients are left in pain.

So what are people afraid of? The most common is the legitimate concern that there’s a risk of addiction with some drugs. Some doctors believe they should be protective and not prescribe some painkillers. Some patients refuse to take anything where the risk exits. This has produced an irony. Hospitals have trained thousands of nurses and support staff in the management of pain, but they are not allowed to prescribe drugs. So even when the nurses and the patients may agree on a particular treatment, they have to wait for the attending physician to appear with no guarantee he or she will agree. The traditional physicians are still worried about addiction. This is changing as the new doctors come through training with more understanding of the multidisciplinary approach to managing pain.

In an ideal hospital and clinic, all the staff would cooperate, i.e. the physical and psychological specialists will talk to each other positively, allowing for the possibility of error in diagnosis or treatment, and involving physical therapy, counseling and a range of alternative treatments to play their part. Indeed, even the spiritual should be involved with in-house staff and local churches offering counseling and support for patients in pain. (more…)