Communication key to treating disabled

Some medical schools are helping budding physicians learn to help their patients with disabilities.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. Oct. 9, 2006.

Washington -- Physicians don't always know how to do the right thing when faced with patients who are disabled and encountering obstacles that stand between them and a productive life. But this information may be there for the asking, say those in the know.

Key to improving this patient-physician relationship is more effective communication, said Lisa Iezzoni, MD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who uses a wheelchair. Make no assumptions and ask about their needs, preferences and lives, she advises.

Physicians aren't going to learn about these matters by applying a stethoscope to a chest, she said. "You actually have to talk to patients and ask them about their daily lives."

Dr. Iezzoni includes several vignettes on missteps made by physicians in an article in the Sept. 7 New England Journal of Medicine. Among them: a patient with shoulder pain who used a manual wheelchair was told not to use her arms so much. Another example was a single mother whose mobility was compromised by complications from diabetes. Her condition was so severe she was not able to get groceries for her family. Still, she was refused a prescription for a power wheelchair because her physician wanted her to walk.

Some 54 million people are living with disabilities. As the nation's population ages, physicians are likely to begin seeing many more. Individuals are also living longer with conditions that would have been immediate death sentences decades ago, and emergency medicine is saving the lives of people who would not have left the hospital in an earlier day. Meanwhile, increasing childhood obesity, asthma and diabetes point the way toward a future of even more disability, said Dr. Iezzoni.

[...]

Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.

Access details

Join the AMA