Summer 2016

PMH STORY

The patient was in her 90’s. She had been the caregiver for her husband. He passed away, and she had lived now a decade as a widow.

The patient had been part of the PMH practice since 1985, and before coming under the care of the PMH doctor, had been under the care of that doctor’s father.

The patient’s dementia had been inexorable, causing gradual loss of ability to care for herself, to recognize people, and to understand what they were doing. She moved from her home to assisted living, then to a nursing home, and then to hospice. She could no longer walk. She had neither children nor brothers or sisters in the area.

The doctor had cared for her at the office, the hospital, the emergency room, at the home, the assisted living facility, the nursing home, and now in hospice. Despite all these changes, her doctor did not change.

After she moved to hospice, the PMH doctor came to see her. She was in a wheelchair in a common area. He asked her how she felt and she did not answer. She seemed not to focus. He said to her, “Do you know my name?” She looked up, smiled and said, “Allan Rowan Kelly.”

What does it mean to a patient with severe dementia to know the doctor who comes to her side? How important is it? In some practices, doctors do not have the opportunity to ponder this question, as they do not maintain that continuity of care from place to place and time to time. But for the PMH doctor, he felt that it was a balm for this person to recognize him, to see his familiar face, to speak a familiar name, and to smile.

As doctors, we are grateful to be able to care for those who know us and have trusted us for years. It gives meaning to our work. If we must care for strangers, so be it: It is good to care for the stranger. But it is also good to care for those we have known over time. It is important to our patients, and it is important to our doctors and nurses. We call it continuity of care, but it is a basic principle of PMH. Continuity of care is important, valuable, and helpful.

Allan R. Kelly, MD FACP

PALLIATIVE CARE By Allan R. Kelly, MD FACP

Over the past 15 years, a loss of continuity of care and other changes in medical care have led to the creation of palliative care teams in hospitals. Do they help?

The National Institutes of Health funded a large and expensive study at multiple sites in the United States, including Harvard, National Institutes of Health, and Cornell, to see if this concept worked (Carson, et al, JAMA, 2016). The study randomized 365 families whose loved ones had been in the intensive care unit for at least 7 days. Half of the group received usual care from the doctors and nurses in the ICU. The other half received usual care plus palliative care intervention, a complex effort including “…brochures…coordinators…information team…palliative care physician…nurse practitioner…social workers…chaplains…or other disciplines.” This palliative care team met with the family of the sick patient in the ICU: “These important information meetings were structured according to a set of objectives and recommended topics…they were allowed some flexibility for adapting the content of the meetings to the particular needs of each family.” Everyone involved had a major stake in the outcome. Massive amounts of money were spent.

BASIC LIFESUPPORT? ADVANCEDLIFE SUPPORT? IS LESSMORE? By Robert H. Kelly, MD FACP

It is often worth questioning assumptions. One assumption is that advanced life support (ALS) provided by ambulance personnel will be superior to basic life support (BLS). This question was addressed in a recent study of emergency medical care given to Medicare beneficiaries by emergency medical personnel (EMS). Sixty-five percent of the EMS crews were ALS trained. Thirty-five percent were BLS trained. Was ALS or BLS better? Did higher level training (ALS) of ambulance crews improve outcome?

ZIKA VIRUS IN TEXAS – WHAT IS THE RISK? By Jacob Underwood, MS2 and Robert H. Kelly, MD FACP

Zika virus is spread to humans through the bite of an Aedesegypti mosquito which became infected itself by biting a human with the virus in their blood – whether that human was having symptoms or not. The virus can also spread from person to person through intimate contact. In July, Utah reported a case without known mechanism of transmission. In August, Miami reported mosquito transmission in the U.S.

NOT TOO BUSY By Allan R. Kelly, MD FACP

The patient was a female physician in her late 70’s. She had a perplexing syndrome of chest pain. After a stay in the hospital, there was still no specific diagnosis. She made a new patient appointment with a PMH doctor.

The PMH physician was part of the medical staff at the same hospital and so directly accessed her medical records.

PMH QUOTATIONS Summer 2016

“A good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

Bennett Clark, MD, 2016

“And since we’ve come to think of the hospital as serving the function of a train station – moving people down the line as fast as possible – we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that some patients’ experiences in the hospital have all the warmth of rush hour in Penn Station.”

AmandaFantry, MD, 2016

“Sure typing is a little bit faster, but I’ll bet a lot of doctors agree that their clinical thinking was better when their notes were scrawled long hand”

B. Ryan Brady, April, 2016