“We’re burned by, ‘Tell ‘em what they need to know, and hope they heard.’ It’s the cultural legacy…” A surgeon told me this when we were talking about health literacy. His candor startled me. He went on to make the point that he was convinced he (and his colleagues) could be doing better. Despite […]
Two structural concerns that can bog down interprofessional communication
I was talking recently to a health administrator about communication between different groups in the hospital system. He said, “Interdepartmental communication has been historically very difficult. There were different incentives that made working together something people didn’t want to do. If your department didn’t make the numbers, you’re in trouble, you’re the one out of […]
Questioning assumptions in digital health tools
It’s easy to think about technology and machines as objective, neutral, value-free. But just this month, three recent major organizations–TIME magazine, NPR, and the AMA–have published work about bias in technology. In this episode, my brother Joe (who’s a health IT pro) and I take a look at a TIME magazine article about research into bias […]
“How can we be effective in the short amount of time we have?”
Patient education is a cornerstone of care. You see many patients in a day and have a high level of complexity to deal with. Your patient education is also expected to achieve multiple simultaneous goals, under increasingly restricted circumstances. A nurse administrator asked me the question that’s the title of this article. It’s no secret […]
Health literacy as an interaction, Part 1
On this date, 14 years ago, Louise Rosenblatt died. She was 100 years old. Louise Rosenblatt was a researcher in reading and writing for nearly the entire 20th century (!!) and into the 21st. Maybe you’ve heard of her. If you haven’t, a Google search for her will yield about 3 billion results. So I’ll […]
Is mentoring on your mind? 4 ways to think about mentoring in the health professions
Whether you are a mentor, have a mentor, or want a mentor, this episode’s for you. I break down four domains–four ways of thinking–about mentoring and mentoring programs that may be helpful to you in the health professions. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT A couple years ago, I had a set of conversations with a physician in Academic Medicine who […]