Christina Spencer's blog

Sholom Glouberman had laparoscopic surgery to remove part of his large intestine after a polyp was found. His father had died young of colon cancer, a disease that runs in families and is preventable if caught early.

Luckily, his polyp was not cancerous. But he got an infection (septicemia) after surgery and could have died if his wife hadn’t rushed him back to the emergency department.

He describes his experience in a new book, My Operation: A Health Insider Becomes a Patient, which names the doctors and nurses who treated him at the Toronto General Hospital and reprints his medical records.

Glouberman, 70, is the philosopher in residence at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto. (I met him when he was my teaching assistant at McGill University’s philosophy department.)

A published expert who knows health care, he has great connections and thought he could stand up for his rights. He was wrong.

This week on the Listen to Me show, "Patients speak up about their experiences and they aren't just ranting, they're demanding and getting reaction from the system."

Sholom Glouberman, Elke Grenzer and Kevin Leonard speak about how their personal stories led them to create the Patients' Association of Canada (PAC), the first organization in Canada with the mission to make doctors listen to patients. They also talk about the February 15th Inaugural Conference on Improving the Patient Experience in Toronto.

The show airs Saturday at 11 am (11:30 am NT) and again on Monday at 11:30 am (3:30 pm NT) on CBC Radio One. Find the link here.

As the philosopher in residence at Baycrest, one of the world’s foremost geriatric hospitals and research centres, Sholom Glouberman helps patients, family members, health care providers and researchers navigate everything from complex ethical issues to interpersonal and interprofessional relationships.

Now, he is turning his talent for insightful analysis to the broader health system and, more specifically, to the place of the patient in the system.

Dr. Glouberman is author of the new book My Operation: A Health Insider Becomes a Patient and one of the founders of the new Patients’ Association of Canada.

The book tells of the colectomy (surgical removal of part of the large intestine) he underwent six years ago, as well as the postoperative complications. The time he spent in hospital and in recovery was put to good use.

Please join us Tuesday, February 15th 2011 for a cocktail party to celebrate the official launch of The Patients' Association of Canada (PAC) and of My Operation, PAC founder Sholom Glouberman’s new book about the genesis of PAC.

The launch party will take place from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM in the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon on the second floor of the Toronto Reference Library, at 789 Yonge Street, Toronto ON M4W 2G8. This is an open invitation, no registration is necessary and there is no fee.

At around 6:00 PM, the speakers will be The Honourable, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, MP, MD and Sholom Glouberman. There will be refreshments and a variety of hors d'oeuvres available.

Feb, 2011 - A Macleans' interview with PAC president Sholom Glouberman reveals that, as a hospital insider, Sholom thought—wrongly—that he was prepared for his own major surgery.

Sholom Glouberman is philosopher-in-residence at Toronto’s Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and a noted health care policy analyst. Six years ago, as a hospital insider, he thought—wrongly—that he was prepared for his own major surgery, a colectomy. His experiences before, during and after going under the knife, detailed in his new book, My Operation, led him to start the Patients’ Association of Canada.

Q: Why do we need a patients’ association?

In the wake of the previous blog post, R.N. Theresa Brown, New York Times columnist, provides her experience of providing a type of care that isn't charted.

At a recent medical conference in Miami, I sat spellbound as Dr. Stephen Ferrara, a commander in the Navy, delivered a keynote address describing his work in a mobile hospital in Afghanistan.

Dr. Ferrara is an interventional radiologist, a doctor who uses medical images — CT scans, ultrasounds and the like — to treat abscesses, biopsy hard-to-reach masses, check blood flow and cauterize bleeds. He first went to Afghanistan as a medic, then made a place for himself in the operating room, where he placed micro-stents to restore blood flow to damaged tissue, checked perfusion to save legs that would otherwise be amputated and embolized wounds to stop blast victims from bleeding to death.

Doctors are routinely missing or ignoring moments that beg for empathy and need more training in responding to human emotions, an article in Canada’s leading medical journal says.

Researchers from the University of Toronto and Duke University in Durham, N.C., say studies suggest doctors fail up to 90% of the time to respond to emotional cues from their patients.

“Empathy is the ability to understand another’s experience, to communicate and confirm that understanding with the other person and to then act in a helpful manner,” the authors write in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

But, in real practice, doctors “infrequently articulate” empathetic responses, they say.

The team points to a recent study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, in which researchers analyzed 20 transcripts from recordings of 137 consultations between doctors at a U.S. Veterans Affairs hospital and patients with lung cancer.

Quickly, learn more about patients' rights!

Check out the newest issue (as of Jan 28, 2011) of Maclean's magazine, featuring a 2-page interview with PAC president Sholom Glouberman on the state of patient's rights in Canada.