May

Connecting patients with services and resources in the community that can help them better manage their health is an important part of daily practice. In many communities finding these resources can involve a frustrating process of searching the web, sifting through printed documents, and handing out sometimes-outdated brochures from different organizations.

It feels to me as though the world is becoming more and more openly callous and harsh. We have terrorists blowing up picnicking families because they were of the wrong faith in the wrong country. We have American presidential candidates bolstering their vote count by fanning the flames of the lowest common denominators of hatred and fear among citizens who are looking for something to believe in and someone to blame for their perceived misfortune.

I recently filled out a number of forms for one of my palliative patients. For those uninitiated in this process, there are quite a few boxes to complete, and in my case I forgot to enter the diagnosis in one of them. Therefore, it was returned, and rightly so. After resubmitting the corrected form I received another fax telling me that my form was out of date and that I needed to use the updated one. You would assume that this is a rare occurrence but you would be wrong.

Discussions about how to best manage weight occur frequently in physicians’ offices. Patients enter our offices with the desire to lose weight for myriad reasons, from management of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, or gastro-esophageal reflux, to emotional, psychological, or appearance-related concerns. This article provides a brief overview of counseling tools and strategies to help address the complex field of weight management.