Getting Adequate Healthcare

[Guest guest]

,

You wrote, " (A) Is it that the Mds are not taught about how severe

pancreatitis is and how many organ systems become involved? ( Is it because of

the

pressures they get from the drug administration? © Is it their fear that we

will become dependant on the pain meds?

You have addressed the main reasons why I think there is a lack iof adequate

care for pancreatitis by healthcare providers.

Re: A: During one of my hospitalizations I was fortunate to have a first year

medical student whose professor later asked to interview me. It was an

interewsting converstation. He said he was surprized because I did not fit the

normal profileof a someone with pancreatitis. Trying not to boil over, I took a

few

breathes and gathered myself. I wanted to make the most of this opportunity

to speak with one of the medical school professors. He admitted that

pancreatitis is mixed into gastrointestinal disorders, and in light of the huge

amount

of material they have to cover, this topic is barely touched. First year

students are told they will get more of it when they study the abdomen. I spoke

to

one of the professors who taught that course, and he said he assumed they

covered it in the first year. He said there was too much to cover to spend a a

lot of time on any specific disease. Their philosophy is to cover the anatomy

and physiology and teach the students to figurte out what went wrong and how to

get it back to working again. He admitted that they often do not cover the

psychosocial aspects of disease because that is covered whent hey study psyche.

Basically it sounds like it is very compartmentalized and not taught on a

holistic viewpoint. I asked what textbooks they had that covered pancreatitis.

At

the time I had this converstation, there literally was only two on the market.

They were usually reserved for GI interns. These two books were also covering

hepatobiliary dissease and not just the pancreas. Since that time, there are

now about seven medical school books out.

Re:B: I think a lot of doctors do have a fear in writing high level

narcotics. There is an organization called The Federation of State Medical

Boards (the

Federation) who is committed to assisting state medical boards in protecting

the public and improving the quality and integrity of health care in the United

States. In 1997, the Federation undertook an initiative to develop model

guidelines and to encourage state medical boards and other health care

regulatory

agencies to adopt policy encouraging adequate treatment, including use of

Opiods when appropriate for patients with pain. Finallyy, in May 2004, these

initiatives came together into a set of guidelines for doctors to use sot ehy

feel

more comfortable in prescribing patients the medicatiosn they need. You can

read a summary of this model under the Files - Campaign Capital Hill - Model

Policy for The Use of Controlled Substances for Pain.htm

Re:C. I doubt it.

Karyn E. , RN

Executive Director, PAI

http://www.pancassociation.org

Pancreatitis Association International