Medical Roulette
I hesitate to write this one, because just like my uncle, aunt and many friends, (that either were or still are), there are many, in the medical field that are passionate, clear minded, responsible line-backers in helping us fight the health care battles we come up against! However, medical misdiagnosis, hospital infections and adverse drug reactions are one of the leading causes of death behind heart disease and cancer, so prevention (and avoiding going down the path of overexposure and overdiagnosis), and buyer’s awareness may have a lot of hidden benefit.
The current CDC estimate is that adverse drug events cause more than 1.5 million emergency department visits and almost 500,000 hospitalizations annually.
2023 New England Journal of Medicine study, examining 2,809 admissions at 11 Massachusetts hospitals in 2018, found:
- 23.6% of admissions involved at least one adverse event.
- 22.7% of those events were judged preventable.
- Medication-related events accounted for 39% of all adverse events.
Preventable hospital death (NIH from Pub Med): “in the USA, these estimates correspond to approximately 22,165 preventable deaths annually and 7150 deaths for patients with greater than 3-month life expectancy.”
Get Wade Yoder’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Journal of Nursing Regulation in 2022. Among 1,170 registered nurses surveyed across nine states:
- 9.9% reported prescription-type drug misuse during the preceding year.
- 6.6% screened positive for a substance use disorder, which could involve alcohol or other drugs.
If this were averaged out with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing report of more than 5 million registered nurses, this 9.9% would calculate out to 495,000 reported (prescription-type drug misuse) in the preceding year and the 6.6% (screened positive for a substance use disorder involving alcohol or other drugs) would calculate out to 330,000.
What we can do: if we have a problem that is acute enough (that our body cannot recover on its own with corrected lifestyle habits), do the visit and take the medicine to intervene between you and the symptoms. If it’s a problem enough to take a medicine, then it’s a problem enough to research where the health issue is originating from, and side effects of the medication if you continue it. We can do this by understanding first what the medicine is for and then seeing if there is anything that we can change in our lifestyle that could help with the problem the medication is for. 2nd have a family advocate, when possible, to be with you and spend time researching what causes the issue (not just finding out what the issue is). Example, if your hip pain gets some fancy diagnosis such as trochanteric bursitis, finding out what it is, may yield a simple solution like avoiding activities that aggravate it for a while. This can be as easy as using a cane to take pressure off of it, instead of using anti-inflammation drugs and pain pills, that may work against the healing process.
To NOT research and fix where the problem is coming from and to choose to continue medicating it instead, is like having a leak in our house and being content to just put a bucket under the leak. The problem will later manifest itself in more destructive ways than just a wet floor, such as rotted wood, rusting and an overall aging of the structure we live in. In this case, suppliers of construction materials and carpenters are the ones that benefit from us not finding and stopping the leak.
Dependence on an overcrowded healthcare system and increased dependence on others for our healthcare instead of personal responsibility creates vulnerability. We as individuals, families and communities can change this by taking personal responsibility in the blessings we should value, nourish and protect.
Question: do we expect others put more effort into my health and wellbeing than I do myself?
