Healthcare

Mental Illness, up close and personal

Posted on: December 18th, 2012 by ecthompsonmd

 

A few people have posted this poignant story from the Internet. It is clearly worth a read:

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

Saturday Morning News Roundup

Posted on: December 8th, 2012 by ecthompsonmd 4 Comments

 

Saturday Morning News Roundup

I was deeply, deeply saddened to hear about a stupid, vicious prank in which some Australian radio personalities called the hospital in which Duchess Kate Middleton was admitted as a patient. These DJs pretended to be the Queen of England. A nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, answered the phone and gave privileged information about the Duchess to these two morons. Yesterday, it appears that Jacintha Saldanha, mother of two and a nurse at this hospital for at least four years, committed suicide. The blame for this tragic act lies with the hospital administration. I'm not sure how it works in England, but I know that here in the United States, since 2000, patient information is treated like state secrets. I know in my hospital, we have a in-service training on patient privacy every year. Hospital fines and individual fines are steep ($1.7 million fine in Alaska) . Releasing privileged information is serious business. I suspect the same type of laws and rules exist in England. It is up to the hospital administration to teach its employees how to handle sensitive information. Most importantly, hospitals must have protocols about how to treat VIPs. This is one of the areas in which this hospital failed. Once a VIP is actually admitted to the hospital, like the Duchess, the hospital should have a command center where all information is filtered, screened and then parceled out to the press. The information should be distributed hospital-wide. Everybody should know what to do with calls that come in from the outside regarding a VIP. Unfortunately, this nurse's career was basically over. She become world-famous, at least in medical circles, for a huge mistake. The hospital's final failure was not realizing the seriousness of this problem in protecting this nurse from the media and herself. The fault for this terrible situation lies with the hospital. What a colossal tragedy.... Read More →

Friday Morning News Roundup

Posted on: November 30th, 2012 by ecthompsonmd

 

Friday Morning News Roundup

There are many lessons to be learned and studied from the disaster that is characterized generally as Hurricane Sandy. One of these lessons that I've been studying has to do with the two hospitals which were evacuated. One of the best articles that I've read so far was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is clearly worth a read.

For weeks, I've said that there really is no fiscal cliff. The heightened rhetoric that we've seen in the media by pundits and politicians can only be categorized as nauseating. First of all, Congress is already cutting $1.5 trillion in fiscal spending over the next 10 years. Secondly, non-defense discretionary spending is projected to fall to historically low levels if Congress does what it does best, which is nothing. All of the thoughtless yammering over the "devastating" impact of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is typical Washington hype. The percentage of small businesses which will be affected is minuscule. Yet, we are led to believe that hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop businesses will instantly go belly up if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire. Horse hockey. I'm afraid that the Democrats on Capitol Hill seemed to have little or no capacity to articulate reasonable and thoughtful positions on the budget. Our argument has to consist of more than the fact that the wealthy can afford to pony up a little bit more money.

A complete Internet and cell phone blackout in Syria shows the extent that some governments will go to in order to suppress the free flow of information.

Once again, the "Stand Your Ground" law is in the news. It appears that a 45-year-old Florida man shot and killed Jordan Russell Davis over some loud music. From reports that I've read, it appears that Michael David Dunn approached Davis and his friends at a convenience store, asking them to turn their music down. An argument ensued and eight to ten shots were fired. Davis ended up dead. Michael David Dunn is claiming that he felt threatened and was therefore justified in using lethal force under the Stand Your Ground law. If you think aspects of this sound familiar, I think you're exactly right.... Read More →

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