Posted on 03/01/2024 5:30:08 PM PST by nickcarraway
— Three healthcare professionals describe when they were gaslit by their peers
Amy Ho: Hey everyone and welcome back to Anamnesis by MedPage.
I'm Amy Ho -- ER doctor and your humble podcast host.
Now for those of you new to the program, welcome. And for those of you joining us again -- thanks for coming back!
By way of introduction, here at Anamnesis -- this is a medical podcast, but its one that isn't about the pure medicine. Because sometimes medicine -- the practice of medicine -- is actually kind of simple. There's drugs, there's labs, there's imaging, there's research studies, trials, evidence-based medicine. Even if the actual content isn't perfectly simple, there is a paradigm for the practice of medicine that is actually, in many ways, quite black and white.
But what gets us going at Anamnesis isn't that black and white discussion of medicine, but the parts of medicine that are gray. It's what makes medicine an art, a practice, an experience.
In every episode here at Anamnesis, we have three stories from three healthcare professionals surrounding one of these themes that are gray in medicine. And while we focus on the voices of healthcare professionals, we cross over frequently to patient voices.
For this episode, we're actually covering both the voices of patient and healthcare worker -- and what happens when one voice crosses into the other role -- because the theme of this episode is "Rx for Reality: Healthcare Professionals Confront Medical Gaslighting."
What we aim to show here is gaslighting is real. Even when you know better as a licensed, credentialed healthcare professional, you can still be gaslit, especially when you're the patient. And that's the power of gaslighting. Because gaslighting is making someone seem or feel unstable, irrational, not credible. It makes them question themselves and their experience utilizing an imbalance of power.
Medicine is, unfortunately, full of that imbalance of power. There's a knowledge imbalance, there is a power imbalance, there's a physical imbalance -- one is in a gown, the other is not -- there's a time imbalance where patients live with their conditions and healthcare workers a lot of times have to squeeze in the whole discussion of that condition into say 10 or 15 minutes.
That imbalance, all of those imbalances, are so powerful as to even overcome a healthcare professional's knowledge and trust in their own experience and cause them to question themselves. Just with that, imagine if it's that bad for people who are in the healthcare system, what could it be like for our patients.
So we hope to bring a little empathy, a little thought, a little compassion to this topic today on Anamnesis "Rx for Reality: Healthcare Professionals Confront Medical Gaslighting."
And we start with our first of three clinicians: neurologist Dr. Ilene Ruhoy, of Mount Sinai South Nassau in New York, with her story.
Chapter 1: When a Neurologist Asks for an MRI, You Order an MRIopens in a new tab or window (3:58) -- Following a slew of normal exams, this neurologist finally found answers. Story by Ilene S. Ruhoy, MD, PhD.
Chapter 2: Putting Together the Puzzle Pieces of Self-Compassionopens in a new tab or window (15:08) -- After years of glossing past symptoms, this doctor had to stop gaslighting herself to be diagnosed. Story by Kara Wada, MD.
Chapter 3: Unmasking a Nurse's Journey Through Long COVID Gaslightingopens in a new tab or window (28:17) -- Repeated dismissal from doctors led a nurse to find her own answers. Story by Jess Warner, RN.
Episode produced by Gillian Boothopens in a new tab or window
Hosted by Amy Ho, MD
Gaslighting and obfuscation are requirements for their sorcery.
I started having novel seizures in February of 2023. After a bunch of specialists, tests, and labs, they couldn’t find anything wrong. One went so far as to claim it was all in my head.
My family got one on video. Doctor didn’t want to see it.
Finally, Dr. McCullough was able to diagnose what was happening. His staff used the term gaslighting to describe how others were treating long haulers like me.
It’s ugly out there.
I had nursing instructors from WWII- “placebo effect” and “iatrogenic” were taught early in the 1st semester. I got the “figure it out” look when I pointed out an infant vaccine label listed mercury as an ingredient. We were also encouraged to ask oncologists if they’d take their own treatments because none would. It was number one in the state, and a diploma program, so of course it closed within a few years of graduating in 1983, and not long after I was informing a university hospital I’d quit if the Hep. vax was mandatory for nurses. I got out before 2010. The bachelor’s program nurses I worked with were full of propaganda and most could barely function clinically, but were really good with paper work and writing care plans they couldn’t actually execute.
How did your long covid treatment, with Dr McCullough, go?
I hope you’re getting back to feeling normal, again, after all of your suffering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi5NXuHxC4g
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