Patient docility

Some call it patient compliance; the more current term is patient adherence. Retro is cool now, though. (I know a guy who wants to call Yiddish zhargon again [translation of headline: "Say it in Zhargon!".)

So we might as well follow the retro trend and call it patient obedience. Just like they should have termed it with all honesty in the good old days.

I love American Spanish!

The picture is from a bathroom in the Bellevue adult outpatient medicine clinics. I also know the phrases apretar el botón or tirar [de] la cadena - but I like floshar much better.

In our Yiddish at home we say aroplozn dos vaser; I know people have also said (op)shvenkn dem klozet. Of course, just like American Spanish, in American Yiddish nowadays 99% of people say (I bet) floshn. I use that word too, with guilty pleasure.

What do you know and when do you know it?

Doctors and patients think differently. One way to understand this difference is to ask the question: how do doctors and patients know? If we try to understand our own ways of knowledge (epistemology), how our patients might know, and how the two differ, this might be productive for our practice of medicine and our patients' health.

See my poster on the topic. When you're done looking, check out the thought-provoking companion exercises. Lastly, make yourself a cup of tea (Lapsang Souchong), sit down, take a minute, and write down your epistemology on a piece of paper. Please e-mail that epistemology to me; I'd like to start a database of such statements-of-epistemology. So far I have an N
of ... 1.

Bris reprise

Summary, pix.

Cheshbon, please!

I'm sorry we had to read another Forward article with the headline "Venerable Journal In Language We Don't Read Closes Its Gaping Mouth" - and I do agree with some of the basic facts: less readers of Yiddish, less writers of Yiddish, blah blah blah zzzzz. (Fewer Yiddish letters, even. Now there are only 16: we had to lay off everything after samech. Sad.) But pleeze, if you do have a Yiddish journal, or care about Yiddish writing (yours or anyone else's), don't expect my pity until you do your utmost to share the wealth of the words you care for. Make sure your journal gets to those who want to read it (I didn't even know the journal still existed - too late now, I guess)! Make sure, for goodness' sake, that your journal has a Web page! As Miriam Koral points out: make sure that you are training your successors! Don't blame the younger generation (thanks for the sneering assessment of your juniors in the last sentence of the article, Mr. Departing Redaktor!) until you get to know them.

EBMBS

What is the effectiveness of pediatric CPR?
What is the effectiveness of laypersons' pediatric CPR?
What is the effectiveness of classes for laypeople about pediatric CPR?
What is the effectiveness of e-mails advertising classes for laypeople about pediatric CPR?

A bris!

Details on request.

Pesach cleaning: universal and particular

I love driving out the leaven. But when I talk to the third or fourth Spanish-speaking immigrant patient who couldn't visit her doctor (me) for weeks before Pesach -- she works for a Jewish family, who "can't give her much time off"-- then the phrase fiestas judias begins to sound a little funny.

* *

I wanted to go memorialize the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but it's too close to Pesach. I suppose this should make the historical memory even sharper: in varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn ("in the Warsaw Ghetto it's Nisan now" -- Binem Heller).