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Blog Archives: February 2008 Archives

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Thursday February 28, 2008

Pelvic Exams: can we talk?

For the past few weeks, we've asked you to tell us about your experiences
in the stirrups. You told us about funny moments like the speculum
getting stuck or even being shot out like a projectile. You also told
us about moments of discomfort, embarassment, even shame. Thanks for
sharing your thoughts.

I wasn't surprised to hear your feedback. What may surprise you is
just how uncomfortable and stressed out some doctors are about this most intimate of physical exams. Surprising, since docs have had centuries to get over their embarassment.

Doctors have been doing pelvic exams since roughly 800 years before the
time of Hippocrates. This vaginal instrument, called a dioptra, that was found in the ruins at Pompei.

vaginalspec-sm.jpg

Throughout the centuries, the emphasis has been on doing the pelvic and getting it over with.
What I've learned from this show is that women and their doctors also need to talk about it.

If you've had pain or discomfort during a previous exam, tell your doctor, even if he or she doesn't ask. Same goes if you've had past traumas that make the pelvic a difficult experience to go through.

Nurses, midwives and doctors need to encourage and welcome these conversations. And this may be controversial, but I also think health professionals should also come clean with whatever makes them uncomfortable about pelvics.

You'll hear more of this on our show Monday. I'd love to hear what you think.


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Monday February 25, 2008

Alert: we've been pre-empted!

White Coat, Black Art is pre-empted on Monday, February 25 for Canada Reads. We'll be back on Friday, February 29 for our encore presentation at 8 pm.

If you want to hear the show before then, download the podcast as of midnight tonight. Or listen to it here:

Do you 'Google' your symptoms? You're not alone. But how good is 'Dr. Google' in helping figure out what ails you?

We've teamed up with Spark to test a couple of cyberchondriacs on their ability to self-diagnose. Last week on their show we gave Tammy and Ben a list of symptoms and sent them to the Internet in search of a diagnosis.

This week White Coat, Black Art, brings Tammy and Ben back to see if they're ready to graduate from the 'Google School of Medicine'.

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Wednesday February 20, 2008

Dr. Google and the Cyberchondriacs

Remember where you were when JFK was shot? How about when the Shuttle Challenger blew up? These are the kinds of shared moments that change everyone's life. Here's a little moment that you won't remember, but I do, because it changed my professional life.

I was working in emerg one evening when I saw a woman with asthma that she said had been getting progressively worse in the last few days. I thought her asthma was severe enough that she needed to take Prednisone. But when I handed her the prescription she said, " I thought Prednisone was a level C risk factor in pregnancy?"

That certainly got my attention. I asked if she was a physician. "No," she said. " I read about it on the Internet."

A bell clanged in my head. It was a little bit like discovering I could walk instead of crawl. Things would never be the same. And they haven't. Not a shift goes by in which someone doesn't challenge my usual medical spiel or second guess my decisions because of something they've looked up on the internet before coming in.

For family docs, the experience is more intense. Their appointments are scheduled. That gives you more time to assemble a sheaf of reports culled from cyberspace.

I think a lot of doctors don't like the fact that the internet levels the playing field just a bit. Just remember, there's knowledge that helps and knowledge that just gets in the way.

On this week's White Coat, Black Art, we've invited two cyberchondriacs to see if they can take the symptoms I gave them last week on another CBC show
Spark and make a diagnosis that a real doctor (aka CBC Health Columnist Dr. Peter Lin) would make. Do you always check out how you're feeling with Dr. Google before consulting your own doctor? Tell me about it.

In the meantime, if you're going to go to the internet to check out your aches and pains, here are some credible sites that doctors sometimes also rely on to make their diagnoses. Happy cyber-sleuthing!

Public Health Agency of Canada

WebMD

emedicine This one is solid gold for physicians on the fly. If I'm in a hurry and in need of a quick fix of medical info, I Google the disease I'm checking out and (+) emedicine. This web site is written in medical technobabble, but it takes you to peer reviewed articles presented in an easy-to-read format and regularly updated.


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