Tag: Managing Pain

Patient Safety Weekly Must Reads (February 4, 2017)

This week in #patientsafety, all quiet on the PPAHS front. We’re working on a few longer-form pieces and podcasts, so stay tuned! From around the web, our top news picks for the week focus on ambulatory care, sepsis, and painkiller prescriptions in Canada.

From PPAHS:

Nothing this week.

From Around the Web:

The Joint Commission publishes ambulatory care, office-based surgery chapters. The chapters describe how ambulatory care organizations and office-based surgery practices apply The Joint Commission’s requirements for patient safety.

Sepsis drives more readmissions than medical conditions tracked by CMS. Sepsis accounts for more 30-day readmissions and is more costly than heart attacks, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia, according to new research in JAMA.

Guidelines for prescribing painkillers are silent on acute-pain treatment. In Canada, new national standards for prescribing painkillers do not address treating patients with acute pain–and some are questioning whether Health Canada’s rejection of a request to expand the scope of the standards was the right decision.

The Problem of Pain

By Kenny Lin, MD, MPH

My patients lie to me every day. Some tell me that they have been taking their medications regularly when they haven’t. Some say that they have been eating a healthy diet and exercising for at least 30 minutes every day and don’t know where the extra pounds are coming from. Some lie that they are using condoms every time they have sex, that they have quit smoking, and if they drink alcohol at all, it’s only a single glass of wine with dinner. They bend the truth for many reasons: because they want to please their doctor, because they don’t like to admit lapses of willpower, or because they are embarrassed to tell me that they can’t afford to pay for their medications. I forgive them; it’s part of my job to understand that patients (and health professionals) are only human. The only lies that I find hard to forgive are the lies about pain. Continue reading “The Problem of Pain” →

Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety (March 20, 2015)

Three main issues in this week’s must reads.

… but, first, a parent’s plight with alarm fatigue – it doesn’t just affect caregivers. If you don’t believe that, then this first-hand account from the parent of a sick baby should change the mind of any doubters that alarm fatigue is real – 14 days of muting and ignoring alarms.

1. March is DVT/Blood Clot Awareness Month

Hats off to @ClotBuster and to @LiverWife for tweeting that March is DVT/Blood ClotAwareness Month! Continue reading “Weekly Must Reads in Patient Safety (March 20, 2015)” →