#Everyone should have Healthcare that includes MH care | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

naamahdarling · 5 years

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hello friend, i am a clueless (non-american, i'm so sorry about the state of your country's healthcare) budding med student here, i'd love to hear your perspective on how the medical institution can improve. what would help You? how i can make a good difference for people struggling with their mental health (and struggling with a system that loves to turn a blind eye on them-) when we're taught fuck-all about this? hey thanks, and you're worth it, i believe in you, you can do it!!

ETA: just parsed the part where you aren't necessarily in the MH field. May add better answers for gen practitioners later but some of this will still be helpful.

Educate yourself on the issues by reading and listening to disabled and mentally ill people. Really work at it. The blogs we keep and the comments others leave there are very helpful.

"Here's a number you can call" is worth way less than "I can sit here and help you while you call." At the same time, understand that phone anxiety is more common than you think and putting clients on the spot can be scary and they may need time to prepare and make a call at a later session. Help them prepare a script if they like.

If you refer someone to a service, you better make damn well motherfucking sure they offer those services and that your client qualifies. Don't offer useless help, it makes you a fucking asshole.

For handouts that list resources, make sure the numbers are updated regularly, and make sure that places you refer patients to are queer friendly.

If you notice a lack of something in the handouts (e.g, no ED groups) see if you can find some to add.

12 step AA style programs are everywhere for everything from addiction to anxiety. They are not effective for many, many, many people. Possibly most. Never ever refer someone to one without offering one or more alternatives.

Some people don't want group therapy. Some won't benefit and they know that, some are not comfortable in a group setting. It's not therapy lite, it is it's own separate and distinct thing. Do not try to push someone into group as a consolation prize for not being able to get individual therapy.

Understand that we are angry with the system a lot, and for good reason. If we seem curt, sharp, indignant, or defensive, there are reasons for that.

Our trust is earned. Many of us will optimistically choose to extend the hand and open up, but not all of us will, and that is SO understandable.

Sending someone inpatient is traumatic and a breach of trust. Be prepared for the fallout, for them not to trust you, and for the weight of the knowledge that you just helped break a little more of their spirit and dissolve a little more of their trust in the system. It may sometimes be necessary, but it isn't kind. (Not all medicine is kind. It can't be. Regardless, it is your responsibility to be as kind as possible.) Remember that, and be slow to do it.

Do everything you can to reduce wait times.

Ask patients about their experiences seeking care. Did they have a long wait for care? Have they had good or bad experiences?

No Fox news or health channel stuff in the waiting room. That shit is all toxic. Be aware of what magazines are in waiting areas. If your clinic serves ED patients, throw out the Cosmos and the fatphobic "health" mags. No Christian literature.

Lobby to get forms at your facility changed to be trans/nb friendly.

"Nicknames" aren't nicknames for some people. Trans folks usually change their names before they change them legally, sometimes by many years. Make sure your facility respects and supports use-names.

Make sure queer people are VISIBLY welcome. Flag colors on signs saying "we welcome everyone" at minimum. Especially do this if there are Christian quotes and whatnot visible. Secretaries should be allowed to have personal cubby decor that includes that, but pro-lgbtq stuff needs to be just as visible. You need to counter the metamessage of hostility those send to people who have been oppressed by people using religion as an excuse. We are often VERY uncomfortable in offices that have cutesy little Bible verses scattered around. If that makes you feel defensive, don't go into practice until you have worked through that.

Ask pronouns.

Educate yourself about queer issues. Don't expect patients to educate you. We are tired.

Make sure you know which of your colleagues are/are not queer-friendly. Protect your clients from the ones who are not in any way you can. Advocate.

Make sure clients, adults AND kids, know that you will keep sensitive information confidential. Don't out people for anything.

Return calls promptly, if only to schedule a later call. Under no circumstances fail to get back to someone altogether.

Follow up with other people they may see at your facility. Case manager, prescribing doctor, etc. Make sure the patient was seen, ask if there are any problems.

If something you are about to say sounds like a quote that could be printed in a pretty font over a nature scene, it's probably a platitude. DO BETTER.

You can have two clients or two hundred, it doesn't matter. If someone feels lost in the shuffle, feels like you don't know them or remember them, you're falling down on the job. Do better.

Never say that "it's not personal" when the system is failing patients. That SUUUUPER doesn't matter!

Remember you are in a position of power over your clients. That's scary for us.

Understand that those of us who have been dealing with our mental health issues for a while and have been in the system for a while are very resourceful. "Try these obvious and basic things" makes us tired and we leave a little disgusted. "Which of these have you tried and are there any you would like to try?" is better.

We come to you at our worst. Don't expect us to be able to magically solve our own problems because you dropped what you think is some little pearl of wisdom in our ear, or handed us a paper with outdated numbers on it. If we could, we wouldn't be there. We need help, not a pep talk.

Don't be a snitch. If someone is doing something on the side for a little extra money but they are on disability, don't rat them out. Don't put it in your notes where SSI can see it.

Maybe send me $20-$50 via paypal for answering your questions because my time is valuable and your request was kinda presumptuous tbh. I appreciate your desire to do right, I wish you the best, but we are not educators. paypal.me/agannon

Know that I didn't do this for you, I did it for your patients.

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jamesclarke99 · 3 years

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Importance of the Flu Vaccine This Season

The flu burden

Influenza (Flu) is a common but deadly seasonal illness. Each year, the flu results in over 12,000 deaths and 140,000 hospitalizations. The elderly population and those with chronic conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease, are at the highest risk of suffering from severe flu cases. The worst flu season over the last decade was during 2017 – 2018, which resulted in approximately 61,000 deaths and 810,000 hospitalizations. During the 2020 – 2021 season, flu activity was much lower compared to the previous years, which may be due to two main reasons: 1) More people were vaccinated during the past season (55% as of February 2021) compared to the previous season (48% as of May 2020), and 2) COVID-19 preventive measures of wearing face masks, limiting public events, maintaining social distance, and frequent hand washing.

Thus, everyday preventive actions and flu vaccinations are crucial for reducing the flu’s death toll and healthcare burden.

Why get the flu vaccine every year

We already know that an annual flu vaccine is the best way to reduce your chance of getting the flu. Below are some facts to explain why yearly flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone.

Flu is caused by two main types of influenza virus: Type A & B. These viruses change constantly, and thus, the vaccines need to be updated each year to cover the current seasonal strains.

You might have heard your doctor say, “It’s time for your Tdap booster shot.” This is because protection from all vaccines, including the flu, declines over time. So, think of the annual flu vaccine as your yearly “flu booster.”

Being vaccinated for the flu reduces your risk of having to go to the doctor by 40 – 60%.

Studies have shown that flu vaccines reduce the risk of flu hospitalizations among older adults and pregnant women by 40% and reduce children’s admission into intensive care by 74%.

Even if a vaccinated person gets sick, their chance of severe illness is reduced – vaccinated people are 59% less likely to be admitted for intensive care. Vaccinated people also spend an average of 4 fewer days in the hospital compared to unvaccinated people.

Getting vaccinated not only protects you but also protects the people around you since the chance of you passing the flu onto someone else is reduced.

Why is it especially important to get the flu vaccine this

year?

The symptoms of the flu and COVID-19 are very similar, including fever, chills, cough, sore throat, muscle pain, headaches, and fatigue. The main differences between the two are the dry cough, change in smell or taste, and skin changes seen in COVID-19 cases. There have been reports of co-infection with COVID-19 and influenza from several different countries to complicate things further. One study from England found that patients with a coinfection had 5.92 times higher risk of death. This is another reason why flu vaccination this year is particularly important for everyone. Even though the flu vaccine will not provide protection against COVID-19, it will reduce the chances of co-infection. Additionally, as COVID vaccines are currently only available for 12 years old and above, vaccinating young children for the flu should be suggested, as children as young as 6 months can receive the flu vaccine.

According to last year’s data, Coronavirus has the potential to infect 60% of the population, is associated with 20% of patients requiring hospitalization, and 5% of patients requiring critical care. Just over the past seven days, there has been a 39.13% increase in new hospital admissions in Erie County. If this pattern continues, the healthcare system may be overloaded during the flu season, given that the flu results in thousands of hospitalizations. This makes the flu vaccination even more critical this year, as getting the flu vaccine can reduce your chance of being hospitalized (just during the 2019 – 2020 season, flu vaccinations prevented up to 105,000 hospitalizations).

Even with the strict lock-down guidelines last year, hospitals struggled with supply shortages because COVID-19 cases resulted in several thousands of hospitalizations. With this year’s COVID-19 cases still rising and with social distancing and masking regulations becoming more relaxed than the 2020 season, it is more important than ever to get your yearly flu vaccine to protect yourself and your loved ones.

The blog article was written by Kumari Biswass, PharmD candidate at the LECOM School of Pharmacy, Erie, PA. LECOM Health and The LECOM Institute for Successful Aging is committed to enhancing wellness for seniors and is hosting over 50 public flu vaccination clinics in the Erie, PA region this season. LECOM Health offers a full continuum of care that includes our Parkside Independent Living Communities and Personal Care apartments, Skilled Nursing Care, and Outpatient Services, including In-Home Care, Home Health, and Hospice. Visit LECOMisAging.com or call 814-868-3883 to learn more.

References

Centers for disease control and prevention. Influenza flu. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

Centers for disease control and prevention. COVID-19 Integrated County View. Available at: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view

Khorramdelazad H, Kazemi MH, Najafi A, Keykhaee M, Zolfaghari Emameh R, Falak R. Immunopathological similarities between COVID-19 and influenza: Investigating the consequences of Co-infection. Microb Pathog 2021;152:104554. doi:10.1016/j.micpath.2020.104554

Iacobucci G. Covid-19: Risk of death more than doubled in people who also had flu, English data show. BMJ 2020;370:m3720. Published 2020 Sep 23. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3720

Khera R, Jain S, Lin Z, Ross JS, Krumholz H. Evaluation of the Anticipated Burden of COVID-19 on Hospital-Based Healthcare Services Across the United States. Preprint. medRxiv 2020;2020.04.01.20050492. Published 2020 Apr 3. doi:10.1101/2020.04.01.20050492

#le comte de monte cristo #fluvccine

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toomanysinks · 6 years

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Kleiner’s Mamoon Hamid thinks we could be in a 15-year-long bull market (and other insights from the firm)

Late last month, the venture firm Kleiner Perkins began an official reboot, with a new, $600 million fund, as well as some new faces blazing the trail for the outfit going forward, including Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman, investors who joined Kleiner from Social Capital and Index Ventures, respectively.

Their roles at the 47-year-old firm are being watched closely. Kleiner was long considered part of a very small circle of top venture funds, but a series of missteps in recent years had yanked it in another direction, with a seemingly endless string of departures further tarnishing its brand. Now, Hamid and Fushman, friends whose paths crossed as children in Frankfurt, Germany, have an opportunity to restore KIeiner to its former glory.

Last week, at a small event hosted in San Francisco by this editor, Hamid and Fushman talked about Kleiner, touching on people who’ve left the firm, how its decision-making process now works, why there are no senior women in its ranks, and what they make of SoftBank’s Vision Fund. (Hint: Hamid doesn’t entirely get it.) They also talked about why they are putting their necks on the line to turn Kleiner back into a powerhouse. Much of our conversation, edited lightly for length, follows.

TC: Mamoon, you left Social Capital, a firm that you’d cofounded, to join Kleiner Perkins in late 2017. Why?

MH: I’d left [my previous venture role with U.S. Venture Partners] n 2011 to start Social Capital with a couple of friends. And it was right around when Steve Jobs had passed away And it seemed like the foolish thing to do. But we were able to raise our first fund and get off the ground and raised a number of funds after that and made some really great investments. Then I had a chance to join Kleiner. There was a point when Kleiner and Social Capital were talking about merging, but it’s hard to do mergers, of private companies, venture capital firms. It’s hard to do, and I think it was the right decision on both parts not to do it. But I got to know the Kleiner folks through that process and it was too compelling to pass up [when they reached out].

TC: How would you characterize your experience at Social Capital, and how does it inform your work at Kleiner?

MH: I’d say venture capital is a very boutique asset class. It doesn’t scale all that well as it comes to both people inside of a firm and the capital you deploy into companies. All you do is create more clones of those companies . . . because the world is finite in terms of what should be out there and what should be used. There shouldn’t be seven versions of Slack; there should be one or two maybe.

The same is true of venture firms. I think what works is a small, nimble, group of dedicated domain experts in certain areas. You can’t have armies running around with your business card [reading] Social Capital. And I think how we look at ourselves at Kleiner Perkins, that’s precisely who we are and who we used to be. If you look at [Kleiner’s] best days, it was a group of five to seven partners, making some really great decisions.

TC: Were you concerned about trading one dramatic situation for another? You knew what was happening inside Social Capital; meanwhile, everyone knew that Kleiner was going through some kind of transition, with a lot of people leaving.

MH: I think part of [my focus] was to be this small group of people, in consumer, enterprise, and I could foresee that happening. Because that was the right strategy, it wasn’t a surprise to me. It wasn’t like I got there and was surprised and thought, Oh my God, this is happening. It was supposed to happen. This is where we driving it to.

TC: Ilya, what made you think this was the right move when Mamoon then asked you to leave Index Ventures to join Kleiner?

IF: Index is a top European venture capital firm. I knew Danny Rimer from Dropbox. Mike Volpi is a partner, and he helped me a lot. And I helped [the firm] get established here in San Francisco, and I did that for about three years, which was frankly an amazing time. And like Mamoon deciding to leave a firm that he started, for me, the decision to leave Index and this part of Index that I helped establish was really difficult — one of the most difficult career decisions of my life, not just because of the firm but the people and the companies they are a part of. So I took a long time to think about this.

But Mamoon and I had chatted on and off for about three years, and a lot of what we talked about as we worked on [shared portfolio companies including] Slack and Intercom and a few other things was what would an ideal venture firm look like if we built it from the ground up. What would be the principles, how would we structure it, how big would it be, how would we think about people who come into it and progress to different levels. And what we envisioned is what we’re building now at Kleiner Perkins. For me, the opportunity to build that atop 47 years of investing history was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

TC: Before we move on, why the split with Mary Meeker and the growth stage business? My understanding was the firm’s best returns in recent years have come from that later-stage side.

IF: Certainly, there were some great logos in the growth-stage fund. But I think returns from [earlier-stage] venture were pretty great as well.

I think where we came down as we were thinking about strategy was this notion of how do you compete. There’s a lot more capital at the seed stage; there’s a lot more capital in growth stage. When we think about ecosystem and landscape of venture, when you look where we’re focused predominately today — which is Series A — the type of work we do and the kind of skills required is mentally quite different from late-stage investing. There’s basically no data. We’re helping founders hire their first sales leader and figure out their product strategy and helping them navigate partnerships. And when you look at the late-stage growth side, a lot of it is financial engineering, and you have to be really good at it, because you have to price things really well. For us, if we’re off 20 to 30 percent on price, it’s probably okay as long as we pick the right company.

And mutually, as we thought about our individual fundraising strategies and our futures, we came to the conclusion that it made complete and total sense for the folks on the early stage and for Mary and other folks to go off and do late-stage investment.

TC: What about Beth Seidenberg and Lynne Chou O’Keefe, two life sciences investors who also left last year? Is health care not interesting to Kleiner? It seems like it’s suddenly interesting to other firms.

MH: Beth is one of the world’s best life sciences investors. She actually retired from Kleiner Perkins. That was her intent with the latest fund, and she has always lived in L.A. and she started her own fund down there and that was part of her plan. So that was not a surprise.

We still do health investing. I think all of us have done digital health investing . . .though they’re more like consumer or enterprise companies. They just happen to sell into the healthcare vertical.

TC: Tell us about the decision-making process and whether that has changed since the two of you joined.

IF: Given that we’re small, we can make decisions very quickly. Sometimes you have to make a decision in a matter of hours or days, and we want to be able to do that, and you can only achieve that with a small, tight-knit group.

So our process is pretty simple. We get together. And you kind of read the room. And if I look at Mamoon and he’s looking at me really skeptically when I’m excited about an opportunity I’m bringing in, I’ll think about it and vice versa. We want the process to be organic and as sort of non-structured as possible to [surface] those decisions that aren’t always unanimous.

If you look at data in venture, the deals where everybody thinks they are bad are probably pretty bad. The deals that everybody thinks are good, they do okay. But it’s really the ones where there is disagreement, where’s there’s controversy, those are the outliers. And it makes intuitive sense, because if it was obviously correct, someone would have build it before.

TC: I hear you have some [junior] investors who are rockstars, including Monica Desai. Will she be a partner some day? Does Kleiner have an apprenticeship model on your watch?

IF: There are various ways to think about a generational transformation or evolution. Our view is we want folks who are thinking long term in their career as investors, who are thinking about and curious about technology, otherwise, you’re pretty bored. And we absolutely think of it as an apprenticeship, learning model where these folks get to work with not just one particular partner or domain but really across the partnership. The goal is to have them invest as quickly as possible and then help companies grow. So it is for us, hopefully Monica and Annie [Case] will be partners very soon.

MH: All five people who are partners today at KP grew up in the business. We were all associates at some point in our career and all of us wanted to be venture capitalists. So there really has to be this mindset of, I really want to do this job, I want to do it really well, and to help great founders build great companies. And we want people to really internalize that aspect of what we do.

TC: Kleiner isn’t the only firm to have five male partners. But given the firm’s history and the press attention paid to it, I wonder: did LPs push back on [your gender makeup]?

MH: LPs don’t push on it. They ask about it. But they also want to make sure that we hire the right people. You’re making a 10-year hire. I’d known Ilya for three years plus before we consummated this relationship. And the KP folks had known me for 10, 15 years before I came to KP. And [longtime partners] Ted [Schlein] and Wen [Hsieh] had already been at KP, Ted for 22 years and Wen for 13 years. So these are really long-term decisions that you’re making, and it’s really important to get it right.

If you spend a year grooming someone, the worst thing that can happen is six months to a year later they’re gone because there’s organ rejection. And that applies to a man or woman, it doesn’t matter. But we’re hiring a consumer partner right now and we’ve been pretty public about wanting some of our partners to be female as well. But you do have to get the chemistry right, the desire to do this job right — everything has to really fit.

TC: What do you think about SoftBank and its Vision Fund? Is it the best thing to happen to venture capital? The worst thing? Soon to be tomorrow’s news?

MH: I’m confused by them. At the Series A, it really doesn’t have an impact. However, the downstream effects [are seen] as companies mature or need to raise capital, or don’t need to raise capital and are offered a bunch of money from SoftBank, which can draw out things. We’re seeing less and less of that, by the way. [There’s] less and less of ‘Here’s money that you don’t need, because we have lots of money to deploy.’ I don’t know why, but last year we saw a lot of that.

I’ve only worked with one company that has raised capital from SoftBank and there’s was a very normal looking round. But I don’t know what to make of SoftBank right now.

TC: How are you feeling about the market generally? A few weeks ago it looked like things were slowing down. Now it seems to have shifted yet again.

MH: It’s weird to be in a nine-, ten-year old bull cycle. Hindsight and statistics suggest that we should have a recession soon. But we’ll tell you that the view on the ground, and the companies we’re involved with, that there’s really strength in almost all of them. These are normal companies that should see softness in their business if there’s something coming down the pike, and we haven’t seen that softness yet in our order numbers. In fact, they’re stronger than ever before.

I don’t know. Maybe we’re in for a 15-year bull run. Maybe there’s this perfect storm of technology coming of age and being so mainstream that there’s not just hundreds of millions of users but billions, and the markets are going to continue to expand and tech companies will continue to thrive, which I think truly is the case. So I don’t know when this one stops. I’m not a macroeconomist, but so far, on the ground, it all looks good.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/14/kleiners-mamoon-hamid-thinks-we-could-be-in-a-15-year-long-bull-market-and-other-insights-from-the-firm/

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fmservers · 6 years

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Kleiner’s Mamoon Hamid thinks we could be in a 15-year-long bull market (and other insights from the firm)

Last week, at a small event hosted in San Francisco by this editor, Hamid and Fushman talked about Kleiner, touching on people who’ve left the firm, how its decision-making process now works, why there are no senior women in its ranks, and what they make of SoftBank’s Vision Fund. (Hint: Hamid don’t entirely get it.) They also talked about why they are putting their necks on the line to turn Kleiner back into a powerhouse. Much of our conversation, edited lightly for length, follows.

TC: Mamoon, you left Social Capital, a firm that you’d cofounded, to join Kleiner Perkins in late 2017. Why.

TC: How would you characterize experience at Social Capital, and how does it inform your work at Kleiner?

MH: I think part of [my focus] was to be this small group of people, in consumer, enterprise, and I could foresee that happening. Because that was the right strategy, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. It wasn’t like I got there and was surprised and thought, Oh my God, this is happening. It was supposed to happen. This is where we driving it to.