Photo: medipics1066 via Flickr
One of the nation’s most interesting, patient- and media-friendly medical organizations next week will focus on a topic more relevant than ever during a pandemic. The annual meeting of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM), which starts Monday as a virtual event, will focus on “Transforming Education and Practice to Improve Diagnosis.” Continue reading
Lisa McGiffert
Lisa McGiffert is best known by journalist, health provider organizations and regulatory agencies, as the former director of the Consumers Union Safe Patient Project, an effort sponsored by Consumer Reports magazine.
In my years of reporting on health, she always seemed to know exactly what was going on in my state regarding quality of care improvement efforts. If she didn’t, she knew who I should call. Continue reading
Cheryl Clark
Cheryl Clark, a journalist based in San Diego, will lead AHCJ’s newest core topic on patient safety.
She will be guiding AHCJ members to the resources they need to cover the many aspects of patient safety through blog posts, tip sheets, articles and other material. The core topic area of healthjournalism.org will feature a glossary, a more lengthy explanation of key concepts, shared wisdom from other reporters, story ideas and more.
Maya Dusenbery
Journalist, author, and editor Maya Dusenbery first became interested in why women are so often misdiagnosed about five years ago, right after she learned she had rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disease.
Dusenbery, an executive editor at Feministing and author of “Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick,” spoke at the recent Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine conference about her research and reporting on the gender gap surrounding medical diagnosis. Continue reading
Photo: Daniel Foster via Flickr
Balancing the challenges of underdiagnosis (missing or delaying important diagnoses) and overdiagnosis (labeling patients with diseases that may never cause suffering or death) can feel like walking across a canyon on a tightrope. Diagnostic errors occur in an estimated 10 percent to 20 percent of cases and will affect most Americans at least once in their lifetime. They are the leading cause of medical malpractice claims, harming more than 4 million people at a cost of more than $100 billion. Continue reading
