“I know I blow up and get angry. I am protective about my patients and the physicians in my department and I can’t help myself.”

Dr. Leonard was one of my coaching clients, a surgeon who had left a trail of destruction by his combative style everywhere – the operating room, staff meetings and medical executive meetings.

“I’m a leader in my surgical specialty. People expect me to be forceful.”

I asked, “What do you look for in a good leader?”

“I want someone who listens to me, who looks at all options without stuffing his solution down my throat. I want someone who is calm, thoughtful and . . .”

After a long pause I heard “Oh.” (more…)

The demand for patient voices is on the rise as hospitals and dialysis centers, research teams and health care advisory groups face requirements to document our participation in governance and program decisions. And many of us have stepped forward to take on these roles.

Some of us do so as victims of horrific medical errors or uncoordinated care resulting in injury or from disrespectful care that undermines all confidence in health professionals and institutions. We want to make sure what happened to us or our child never happens to anyone else.

Some of us are heroes, defiantly wearing Jimmy Choo stilettos to chemotherapy or battling our over-extended doctors to ferret out a cure for our or our mom’s disease. We want to demonstrate that with a ton of chutzpah, considerable energy and a little luck, we patients can overcome some of the limitations of health care and live to tell the tale. (more…)

A lot went on in the health care world this week, from a 10-year-old girl getting a lung transplant to a SCOTUS ruling on gene patenting to continued discussions and commentary on ACA and its implementation. With all this going on, chances are you might have missed some of the other stories. We’ve got you covered…

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is stepping down as of next month.  Her efforts over the last four years have impacted the lives of all Americans. Politico has more on this.

Kaiser Health News ran an article on hospitalist Dr. Zubin Damania and his alter ego, ZDoggMD, who using satire sings about everything from insurance paperwork to prostate cancer. (more…)

It has been a busy 2013 for the United States Supreme Court. Thus far, they have heard a variety of cases- spanning from voting to the right to marry for same sex couples. Today, the Supreme Court ruled on another highly anticipated decision concerning the ability to patent human genes, which held implications for the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer.

In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes.  Specifically, the case concerned patents held by Myriad Genetics on  genes that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. (more…)

Recently, I was asked to see a male patient that complained of upper abdominal pain and “indigestion”. When I interviewed the patient he informed me that his pain moved to his chest and spread to his jaw, he had numbness in his right arm, and reported feeling faint, dizzy, and occasionally short of breath. The middle-aged man was a smoker, had parents and siblings with heart disease, and he had high blood pressure. Further testing confirmed my suspicion that he was having a heart attack and indeed had the classic symptoms of severe chest pain spreading to his jaw, numbness in the arms, and lightheadedness, dizziness, and shortness of breath.  In contrast, I have treated women patients that had a heart attack without the classic symptom of chest pain that reported only fatigue. The symptoms of a heart attack can be subtle in women, vary among individuals, and heart disease increases your risk. Therefore, knowing more about heart disease and heart health is empowering. (more…)