Health | NC Health Action

How Medical Malpractice Can Cost You

Medical Malpractice is one of the biggest concerns in the medical world today because of its high effect on the workforce. Many doctors are not malignant in their work when they commit medical malpractice. Instead, many are simply overworked and rushed. The many cases of medical malpractice have raised costs for doctors and patients alike, however, as doctors’ insurance increases dramatically as cases of malpractice are involved. These costs are then passed down to their patients. These high medical bills make keeping in good health or saving a life a costly expenditure that is simply not affordable for many people.

Insurance companies are not to blame, however. Doctors simply have little room for error when the life and health of a patient is on the line. With such a high-stress job, twelve-hour shifts may need to be replaced. One medical malpractice Southern California-based case involved a patient’s chart being misread by a doctor on the eleventh hour of his shift. The doctor overlooked her allergy to a specific medication, and the patient lost her life. Clearly, a new system of working must be implemented to ensure that doctors are alert and awake on the job.

If hospitals do not start to recognize their need for changes in how they staff and schedule, however, what else is passed down to the patient? Certainly more medical malpractice cases include loss of life or quality of life. Poorer care will also be a symptom, as will a higher chance of a misread chart or a missed life-threatening sign. These costs are not acceptable, just as the higher insurance premiums are unaffordable.

Filed Under: General, Health Tagged With: Medical malpractice, Medicine, Patient

How to Become a Dietitian

Have you always been interested in food? Does the way food interacts with our bodies intrigue you? When you are going back to school, you need to think about the things that you are interested in, and if food and health have always been an interest, then it may be a logical step to consider becoming a nutritionist or dietitian.

Many people who go into this field start young. They start with an interest in biology and chemistry in high school, as well as health and food sciences. Many times, an interest may develop from there to making meal plans for the family, to making sure that everyone is eating healthy. Once you have decided that you want to become a dietitian, it is a matter of finding the right school. There are many schools out there, and at American Intercontinental University, you can get your degree online.

Either during your schooling or after it, you will want to take the certification testing to become a certified dietitian in your state. This means that you will be legally able to work with hospitals, nursing homes, and more. Many dietitians work with these facilities to help them make meal plans to accommodate everyone that they feed, as well as educate those that are in their care.

Whether you want to study how our bodies interact with food, help those with diseases discover the right meal plan, or educate people on proper nutrition, you can easily do all of this with the right training. This training comes with getting your degree as a dietitian or nutritionist.

Filed Under: Health, Nutrition Tagged With: Dietitian, Health, Nutrition

A Look At How Healthcare Providers Help You

Have you ever wished you could go behind the scenes at your doctor’s office and see what he sees? How do doctors make critical healthcare decisions? Healthcare professionals of all types, especially doctors, need access to a lot of information so they can make intelligent decisions. This may be as simple as checking to see if the medication you’re taking will interact with a medication that is about to be prescribed. However, a doctor also may need access to your entire medical history in an easy-to-digest format, since some critical decisions involve multiple factors. Luckily, today’s healthcare information systems can make it easier for physicians to obtain the necessary information.

How Departments Communicate

Another common healthcare challenge made easier by modern healthcare information systems is enabling different departments of a healthcare facility to communicate. A surgeon can order an x-ray during surgery and then a pathologist in a different building can almost immediately access the image. Or, the receptionist in one building can see that a patient has been instructed not to eat or drink anything before she offers him some water. These changes add up to improved patient care and more favorable patient outcomes.

Pictures Worth a 1,000 Words

For example, let’s say you’ve just had an operation, and your doctor orders a chest x-ray to assess the vitality of your heart and lungs. For this information to be the most meaningful, however, he needs to compare the image to a previous x-ray, to see if any pathological changes have occurred. Healthcare information systems now commonly allow doctors to pull up both x-rays on the same screen, so that they can easily be compared.

Filed Under: Health, Health Care Tagged With: Health care, Health care provider, Physician

Promoting Natural Healing for Pain

: Image via Wikipedia

While some may consider platelet rich plasma injection therapy (more commonly known as PRPtherapy) as a cutting-edge procedure to treat pain stemming from tissue damage and injury, the treatment was developed in the early 1990s to assist with patients’ healing after heart surgery and to help compensate for blood loss resulting from the surgery.

Now PRP therapy is being applied to other medical problems, such as injuries to muscles, tendons or ligaments. Whether it’s a simple case of tennis elbow or a severe case of degenerative arthritis, many can enjoy the convenient, safe and efficient benefits of this remedy.

What is platelet rich plasma injection therapy? It’s merely a medical procedure which capitalizes on the body’s own ability to heal itself using the specific chemicals stored in platelets. By applying a concentration of these platelets to an injured area, the therapy can stimulate and accelerate the body’s natural healing process.

After a doctor/patient consultation to insure that PRP is the best option for the patient, the procedure itself takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. A small amount of blood is extracted from the patient’s arm and placed in a centrifuge apparatus which spins the blood at a high speed. This increases the concentration of platelets and growth factor in the blood sample by 600%.

This sample is then re-injected into the patient’s body at the site of the injury or pain. The platelets release growth factors which assist in the healing of the tissue. The growth factors also help initiate an increase in the number of stem cells, which are necessary for healing.

Healing takes place over a period of time — anywhere from one to three months. Inflammation sometimes occurs at the injection site but will fade within days.

PRP therapy technology truly taps into the body’s internal power to heal itself and promotes an accelerated natural healing process.

Filed Under: Health, Treatment

Keep Your Cholesterol Low By Watching Out For These Foods

There are many injuries to our body that can happen in an instant. These are often accident related. But there are just as many injuries which build up over time. Before you know it, a life of unhealthy eating and no exercise has caused your blood pressure to spike and your cholesterol to peak. None of this is going to happen because of one delicious bacon cheeseburger. However, a steady diet of high cholesterol inducing foods can be a gateway to heart disease. Nobody wants to deal with that and yet the CDS puts the figure at 35 million Americans who have elevated cholesterol levels that put them square in the danger zone.

Most of us are aware that anything green and anything berry is going to help lower our cholesterol. But just because we’re eating more fruits and veggies doesn’t mean that’s all it’s going to take. We need to cut out large portions of those other high fat foods as well. Take for example ground turkey. Just because you’re making the switch to turkey doesn’t mean you’re out of the “fat woods” all together. Keep an eye out for the fat content of your ground turkey and watch the portion size.

Another item to keep an eye out for is mashed potatoes especially the ones we order in the restaurant. Most likely those spuds will be loaded with butter, milk, sour cream and all other kinds of goodies that aren’t always good for us. Skip the taters and go for a salad instead. When you’re back at home, you can control your mash with low fat alternatives.
Beware the pepperoni pizza. So tasty, so chewy, so possibly bad for our cholesterol. Yes, one slice won’t kill you as long as you use that rational once a month. Otherwise, try some veggies on that slice. It’ll taste good and make you feel great!

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Cholesterol, Heart disease

Knees Need Nurturing

We’ve all been told many times that part of complete healthy lifestyle needs to include some form of physical activity. Unless we keep moving, we can get into some serious issues with weight, blood flow and a whole host of other items. Does this mean we should all be springing up from our sofas and joining a gym? Yes on the gym, but be careful on the “springing up.” As we make a goal to get into better physical shape, one of our body’s hot zones to protect will be our knees.

Any first year medical student will tell you that the knee is a pretty complicated joint. It’s basically a hinge for our leg that is kept functioning by a system of tendons, cartilage, muscle and ligaments. It’s also extremely prone to injury. Literally getting out on the wrong side of bed could cause knee problems.

There are some steps to take in order to insure your knees’ needs are being met. First of all, don’t ignore the pain. Sure you can bump your knee and be in discomfort, but the real knee pain to watch out for occurs after you’ve worked out. If you wake up with some serious knee pain that persists, head to the doctor. Staying on top of a potential knee problem is the best way to minimize the impact.

Speaking of impact, one of the biggest stress factors for your knees is you own body weight. If you are putting extra stress on your knees because of extra pounds you’ll discover soon enough what it means for a knee to “give out.” To lose that weight, you’re going to need to get physical. Before you do any type of activity, it’s always best to stretch first. Again, check with the doc for stretching tips. Be good to your knees and they’ll be good to you.

Filed Under: Health, Health Center Tagged With: Knee, Physical exercise

Don’t Suffer from an allergy to dairy products

Many people suffer from food allergies without the awareness of what is causing their discomfort or health problems. Do you feel tired or bloated after eating a meal with cheese in it? Do you feel like you have a stuffy or runny nose after drinking a glass of milk? Do you get constipation or get nausea after eating? If so, you may suffer from an allergy to dairy products.

Dairy products are any food item that is produced from the milk of any animal. This includes a glass of milk or adding Parmesan cheese to your pasta. Even cream or half and half added to your coffee can affect you if you have an allergy to dairy products. It is an easy allergy to overlook because dairy products can also be found in a number of processed and packaged foods in the form of a minor ingredient.

In order to test yourself to see if you have an allergy to dairy products it is best to contact a health professional. If you are interested in checking yourself at home first before seeing a doctor you could try eliminating dairy products from you diet all together. It can be difficult to feel a difference from one meal to the next, so eliminating dairy products from your diet for 30 days will help you get a sense of how dairy products are effecting you. It is important that if you are having problems with your digestion you should immediately see a physician. The above suggestion is just to help you inform the doctor of your symptoms.

There are many digestive supplements that can help you with digestion of dairy products if a doctor suggests you could benefit from such products. Of course the best course for someone with an allergy to dairy products is probably to remove them from your diet.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Dairy product, Food, Health, Milk

Coping with an alergy to Gluten

Many people are becoming aware of their allergy to gluten and/or wheat. Due to the ill effects of an allergy to gluten, including the possible development of celiac disease, diet changes are an important treatment.

The first and most important course of action is to remove all food sources that include wheat and gluten. Grains that contain the gluten protien include, wheat, barley, rye, and spelt. In order to avoid these grains one needs to avoid more than just wheat bread. One should avoid any bread or bakery products found in the store that is not labeled “Gluten Free”. This includes cookies, cakes, bagels, and muffins. In addition to these items, many canned soups and other packaged meals contain some form of wheat added as a thickener into the meal. Also to be avoided is wheat or egg pasta. Most cereals also contain gluten, as well as many bags of chips. It is important to always read the label of whatever product you buy.

It is best to visit a store with a number of gluten free products, such as a natural food store, but even many major grocery stores now have a gluten free section. The only way to be safe is to know exactly what is in everything one eats. Just a label of wheat free does not indicate gluten free. Because gluten can be found in other grains one should not be mislead because a label states “wheat free”.

A good choice is to just cut breads and pastas out of your diet. Focus on eating whole foods such as vegetables, meats and grains that you cook yourself. Great grains for meals includes rice or quinoa. Instead of a sandwich, put the sandwich fixings on a bed of lettuce. Just because you are gluten free doesn’t mean you can’t eat well.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Allergy, Food, Gluten, Gluten-free diet

Sex Addiction

1. More People Addicted to Sex Than Will Admit

It is almost a sure bet that more people are addicted to sex than will admit. Sex addiction is however a very real addiction affecting thousands of people. The shame and stigma of the disease that many view as being loose, causes many to live dangerously in addictive highs and lows until they crash hitting rock bottom.

2. Sex Addiction Ends Relationships

A sex addict is not a well person. Like other addictions Sex Addictions in motion may not look like whatever we imagine a Sex Addict to look like. A sex addict could be the nice woman who took your information at the front desk, or your Aunt Shelby. It can be anyone who uses sex as a tool for fulfillment. A sex addict is not long for a relation s hip not a healthy one anyone. Addicts are greedy and sex is like a drug. Feigning for the next high any body will do. Literally. This person will bring home disease to an unsuspecting partner because they can’t control the urge to get the high of sex.

3. Do I Go or Do I Stay? An Un-Willing Party to a Sex-Addicted Relationship

The key is to always protect yourself. If you are involved with a sex addict you have probably been both lied to, and cheated on. If you decide to stick by your partner’s side get individual and couples therapy and insist he or she do the same. This one shouldn’t be debatable or negotiable! Drawing up a contract for your partner to sign outlining a plan of action that includes an emergency plan should take precedence if you stay.

4. Recovery is Possible
A hard core optimist would say that recovery from Sex Addiction is possible and that people, deserve a second chance.

Filed Under: Health, Womens Health Tagged With: Addiction, Sexual addiction, Sexuality

HIV and African-American Women

1. African American Women make up the fastest growing population to be infected with HIV the virus that leads to AIDS. Exposure to the virus is through unprotected sex, and or mixing bodily fluids with an infected person. Failure to use condoms and not knowing the status of a sexual partner can be life threatening.

2. More than Meets the Eye

Homosexuality is not as accepted in black culture as is in white culture. Taboos around being openly gay or lesbian in the black community are many. Out of this the over and sometimes misuse of the term down-low in reference to black men who are involved in committed relationships with women, but who secretly sleep with men.

3. Clubs and Pubs

Black men are less likely than their white counterparts to purchase Internet Porn and Phone Sex, but they spend lots of dollars at establishments that feature exotic dancers. Many men can’t leave the fantasy on the stage and engage in sex with random women. If you know this and insist on condoms that is something. If as black woman involved in what you think is a monogamous relationship it pays to protect yourself.

4. The Church and Change

The Black Church has aided black people in community and survival tactics for over a century. They are doing what they can but change is slow. Women have to be proactive about their bodies and their health. Knowing your status takes less than twenty minutes and only requires a quick swab of the inside of your cheek. Some churches are offering resources and testing to those seeking service. Others collect for AIDS victims and advocacy services that do outreach.

5. Resources
If you are become infected seek medical help and a support from family and friends or a support group. With healthy life changes and choices people are living healthier, longer and better informed lives.

Filed Under: Health, Women's Healthcare Tagged With: AIDS, HIV, Phone Sex, United States