The Power of Vulnerability

Tiffany McLeod

Ted Talk

Brene’ Brown

The Power of Vulnerability

Ted Talk

Brene’ Brown

The Power of Vulnerability

Brene’ Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston and has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, empathy, authenticity and shame.  She has posed the question about learning to embrace our very own vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of worthiness.  

Connection is a very important piece to people stepping outside of themselves and being able to relate to others.  Many individuals scream for that sense of belonging and in many ways it is disguised and hidden behind shame and fear of allowing others to hear and see never mind sharing. And many don’t want to allow themselves to be seen in the eyes of someone else.  Many crave a sense of worthiness and struggle with the question of: Am I good enough?  

·         Courage- It takes courage to realize one’s own imperfections.

·         Compassion- Being kind to yourself and then to others.  Because you can’t display compassion if you’re not treating yourself with that same love and compassion first.

·         Connection- Willing to let go of who you think you should be versus who you really are.  And has to come with embracing full and total vulnerability.   

o   Debt

o   Obesity

o   Alcoholics

o   Drug Abuse

Society has almost taught us to numb these feelings that so many face regardless of stature because it affects so many within many different social classes.  There is no more conversation just blame in such a strife for perfection.

How Do we heal Medicine?

Ted Talk

By: Atul Gawande:

How do we heal Medicine?

Atul Gawande is an general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston Massachuttes.  Atul also is a staff writer for "The New Yorker" and has a faciniation as to how doctors can improve their practices in medicine by using something as simple as a checklist. Atul approaches medicine with a personal outlook, and really makes it a point to approach medicine from a personal perspective regarding, intention, reliability while urging doctors to make small changes to improve performance. 

According to Atul " Better is Possible.  It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity, it takes ingenuity and above all, it takes a willigness to try. "

How do we get good at what we do?  It’s hard enough to gain the skills, material but then how to master that skill is a different task.  As a medical professional there are many things one tends to think about such as how to sew, how to cut, what proper tools to use and what candidates they choose to operate on. In the midst of all this pressure comes a new concept of how to care for patients due to many that are concerned about “fixing/ healing” the patient.  It has been identified that many don’t realize or take into account the actual cost of healthcare, which has many countries asking if they can really afford what doctors do.  The political fight has questioned if it’s the government that is the problem or the insurance companies.  Lewis Thomas was a physician writer who wrote about what it was like to be an intern in the pre penicillin era at the Boston City Hospital in 1937.  Medicine was cheap and very ineffective; being in a hospital was only good because it provided you with warmth, food, shelter and the caring attention of healthcare workers.  Thus began the core structure of medicine was created defining what it meant to be good at what one did. And where we are seems to be a completely different world, but they can make it possible to treat much more medical illness and conduct even more medical procedures. Doctors have realized that they can’t do it all; many people play a part in complete patient care. 

4 thousand medical and surgical procedures and over 6 thought new antibiotics.  The question remains how many patients are receiving incomplete care?  How have we come to have such unmanageable costs to provide care to people who truly need it, to provide years to one’s life rather than a temporary fix.   The most expensive care isn’t always the best care; it is all about obtaining the best results.  Rationing has come into play having the government wondering who needs to kicked off of Medicare, and many have found that systems work the best.  As a people we want the best specialists, the best medicine and the best care but haven’t thought about how all of that comes together.  According to Atul systems can be good if used and evaluated properly. 

·         Find where your failures are

·         Devise Solutions- such as checklists that provide pause points, which will make one aware of problem areas and tactics.  Then focus on the killer items that will prevent problems from escalating.  This is bigger than a drug

·         The ability to implement- There is a deep resistance that proves how far away from being a functioning system we are.  Teamwork and communication are still areas many have yet to come up to.  We need to operate with different values which may be different from ones we are accustomed to such as: humility, discipline, teamwork which has been the opposite of what healthcare was built on, independence , self sufficiency and autonomy. 

Creativity Assignment

 

Tiffany McLeod

Creativity Assignment




Anthony Quinn was born with creativity running through his blood line.  His mother used to craft hand sewn handkerchiefs by drawing pictures on linen and selling them in order to feed the family.  Anthony's father embraced his artistic talent by playing Mexican folk songs on the guitar.  Even though their home was a humble shack, his mother took great pride in keeping their dirt floors clean.  At a young age Anthony learned that regardless of how poor he was he was convinced life could be made richer through the arts.   






I choose the Lolanda solid wood sculpture by Anthony Quinn.  Lonanda Addolori was Anthony's  costume designer and second wife whom he was madly in love with for 31 years.  The marriage crumbled in 1993 when he had an affair with his secretary that resulted in a baby being born.   This sculpture really showed the essence of a woman embracing her curves in a way that screams confidence.  In a world where size has become such a stigma of what the face of  beauty should be and the shape  of  a woman has been viewed that if you have curves or meat on your bones you are now obese and not attractive. This sculpture shows that Anthony had a love for a woman that was curvy, he excentuated hips that told a story and a stomach that had a buldge weather before or after giving birth and a stance that said yes i am still yet sexy.  

I thought this piece to be quite creative because through the eyes of Mr. Quinn he saw beauty in a way that others could only see from the surface.  He took the time to carve each shape and bring forth pieces that others may just have missed from the naked eye. 

Medicaid Provides Poor Quality Care: What the Research Shows

Medicaid Provides Poor Quality Care: What the Research Shows
By: Brian Blasé


There has been several research studies that show that Americans enrolled in Medicaid have less access to health care, and when they do receive the care the quality is inferior to the care provided to other patients. Medicaid is failing current patients who are enrolled and taxpayers must be notified of the changes taking place.  According to Brian the Medicaid expansion within Obamacare will further weaken the program and hurting those who truly need it and will burden taxpayers.



Medicaid is a costly and unsustainable welfare program that delivers low quality health care , providing low provider payment rates which in turn makes for a hard time finding a doctor.  By doing this it forces many patients to rely on expensive and overcrowded hospital emergency rooms for what is deemed as non-emergency care.  Medicaid patients are assigned to less skilled surgeons and receive poorer post- operative instructions and at most times suffer worse outcomes for identical procedures than similar patients both with and without health insurance.





In 2020 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare will enroll up to 25 million additional people into Medicaid including those who had private health insurance.  It has been suggested that congress should have another course that allows states greater leeway to determine how to provide safety net health care within a framework that encourages those states to be wise stewards of taxpayer dollars.  Medicaid patients stay in the hospital an average of 10 days compared to 7 days for patients who are privately insured.   Another frightening discovery was when a closer look was taken regarding children with asthma.  Researchers found that a child having private coverage was  5 times more likely to see an asthma specialist than if they were on medicaid.  Children with Medicaid are 50 percent more likely to be seen by a doctor in the emergency room in the past year alone.


According to a 2004-2005 survey only half of american physicians accept all new Medicaid patients
Many don't believe Medicaid should not expand but should be reformed because it is currently failing taxpayers and has become too large to serve those individuals wo truly need public assistance. 

Project Outline

 Question : What is the impact of insurance coverage plans on courses of treatment assigned to the patient?

The National Bureau of Economic Research

 

 

Medicare is one of the largest health insurance programs in the world with an annual cost of about $260 billion.  At 17 percent of the US health costs and about one-eighths of the federal budget Medicare provides  universal health insurance for  the elderly as well as the many disabled Americans.  Since the start of Medicare in 1965 to now it remains the single largest change in health insurance coverage in history.   The introduction was associated with the 23% increase in total hospital expenses and with the spread of health insurance from 1950 to 1990 we can start to see where the the 40% of that periods rise in health spending. Rand Health Insurance Experiment (HIE) is one of the largest experiments of the kind to be conducted in the United States.  HIE compared the spending of individuals randomly assigned to different health insurance plans and based on the comparisons the impact of health insurance on hospital spending was at least five times smaller than what other economist estimated.  Market wide changes may increase market demand for health care enough to make it worthwhile for hospitals to incur the fixed costs of adopting a new technology.

 

Amy Finkelstein and Robin McKnight investigated the question of What benefits did Medicare produce for health care consumers, while still noting that public health insurance may provide better health and create risk reduction.  In their analysis of comparing the insurance value of the reduction in the risk of large out of pocket medical expenses they estimate that Medicare is enough to cover between 45 and 75 percent of its incurred costs. In the long run Medicare has been associated with hospitals getting more cardiac technologies and the elderly mortality  may be much larger than the ten year impact initially thought. 

Health Policy Briefs/ Risk Adjustments in Health Insurance

Health Policy Briefs
Risk Adjustment in Health Insurance in 2014
August 2012 Article
Tiffany McLeod

What is the Issue?

Insurance market reform under the affordable care act has been designed to increase the number of Americans with insurance.  The current system have focused on enrolling healthy employed people rather than the sick.  Risk adjustment is a process where insurance plans will be paid based on the health conditions of the people who are enrolled.

Critical Thinking Reflection 1

When you hear a hear a politician, and economist or corporate executive talk about the wonder of free market in health care it is not mentioned that the system doesn’t tolerate any other consumer product.  In the supermarket you know exactly what every customer pays for each item because it is marked.  But in health care this information is impossible to come by.  Health care providers can charge a customer five times as much as another.  In American health care a corporate executives pay the least, while working and non-working people has the system determining what they pay.  The self- employed are unable to secure insurance while the working yet poor people make too much money to qualify for government paid Medicaid and are charged top dollar for insurance.  Over the last few decades American health care has radically changed.  A system that was largely not for profit has become a field where the profit motive and market forces affect every decision. Publicly held corporations answerable to stockholders decide which doctor you may see, how much medication you can take, weather you can be evaluated by a specialist, weather you qualify for a test, how long you stay in a hospital, how many therapy sessions you may attend.  Health care has become a lottery and if you work for a large company that provides generous benefits, you win but if you work for a small company or as an independent contractor you lose.  So no matter how much of an important job you have that may be vital to society it all means nothing once you get sick and can’t afford the health care you need.