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Interviews with survivors, victims' families, policy makers, and health care workers. What went wrong? How can we make health care safer? Host Scott Simpson, uses his counselling skills to evoke the secrets, stories and solutions. https://www.patreon.com/rss/MedicalErrorInterviews?auth=2eY8hVY9bd5o78a8cmpNSURYZ2VrqXrq
Episodes
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Pretty much everyone who’s had a chronic or complex illness will have a story to tell about some of the most ignorant and arrogant - and dangerous - utterations made by physicians.
I’ve spoken with a lot of health care workers and patients from a wide variety of health care systems, and regardless of their geographic location, the god complex physician culture is rampant in their institutions and is a significant cause of medical error, harm and death.
When Jenna Payne’s health took a nose dive, she encountered countless doctors that dismissed or denigrated or shamed her physical symptoms. Turns out Jenna wasn’t faking her symptoms, and she didn’t need a husband and baby. What Jenna needed was a competent physician.
In our interview, Jenna takes us on a journey from the United States to Russia, and from health care to health harm.
Connect with Jenna Payne:
https://twitter.com/jenna_payne
https://kypsel.com/comics/zompire-vixens-from-pluto-episode-one
https://www.youtube.com/user/dirjennapayne
www.disastercapitalproductions.com
Monday Sep 07, 2020
Monday Sep 07, 2020
Have you had an MRI? Was it an MRI ‘with contrast’?
That’s when the MRI technician injects you with a chemical called gadolinium so they can read the MRI easier. They probably told you to drink a lot of water to flush it out of your system, and that it would be gone from your body in 24 hours.
What they probably didn’t tell you is that some people’s bodies don’t flush out the gadolinium and it makes them chronically sick and disabled.
And they probably didn’t tell you that the Food and Drug Administration requires that an MRI with gadolinium comes with a black box warning.
Or that Europe and Japan have banned the use of gadolinium.
And they probably didn’t tell you that even if you do report side effects, you’ll be gaslighted by doctors who will tell you it’s impossible to have gadolinium toxicity and that you’re imagining your symptoms.
In this episode of Medical Error Interviews, I chat with Casey Steidle, a creative and athletic woman living in California. Casey tells us about her body’s immediate reaction to the gadolinium injection, the response of the health care workers and her doctor, and then the tragedy of her doctor sending Casey for another MRI with contrast and how that severely damaged her body.
Casey also shares how she had to take control of her own health destiny when the medical system turned its back on her, and about the treatments she pursued that have helped her regain a lot, but not all, of her health and quality of life.
Mri toxicity illnesses - FB -- https://www.facebook.com/groups/Gadolinium
The Lighthouse Project: https://gadoliniumtoxicity.com/
Casey’s website www.caseysteidle.com
Instagram @caseysteidle
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Aug 31, 2020
Monday Aug 31, 2020
When Donald’s pregnant wife was diagnosed with a serious heart condition, and then a few months later their newborn son was also diagnosed with a similar, but different, life threatening heart condition, the Lepp family started 2 similar, but different, simultaneous journey’s in the health care system: one designed for children and the other for adults --- and along the way they encountered many forms of medical error.
Ih his book ‘Heart Broken’, Donald recounts the emotional rollercoaster his family endured as their life and death care intersected with a bureaucratic medical system stuck in status quo. Too often we hear of families doubly devastated when the hospital denies and or delays a resolution and reconciliation. For the Lepp family, developing clear communication - and trust - with the health care team was crucial for positive outcomes.
In our interview Donald shares his insight about their experiences afforded through hindsight. As Donald notes, medical errors are common place, a reality that cannot be denied --- and what is most salient is how the health care system responds to those errors. Depending on that response, a bad situation may become tragic -- or may become an opportunity of learning and meaning.
We all know what injured patients prefer.
Connect with Donald Lepp:
Buy Heart Broken online
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donald.lepp
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-lepp-cphr-shrm-scp-0717589a/
Twitter: @DonaldLepp
Personal blog: https://t.co/8j7uX0Dh8x?amp=1
Book blog: https://t.co/PjJFPpwvJD?amp=1
Monday Aug 24, 2020
Monday Aug 24, 2020
In spite of our great science and medical advances in the last 100 years, what we know about how the body works is still embryonic. Especially when it comes to our body’s most complex organ - the brain - as Dr Susan Cunliffe can attest.
Dr Cunliffe received numerous rounds of ECT - aka shock therapy - each more powerful than the last, each designed to ensure Susan’s brain was assaulted so hard it had a seizure.
The brain tries to protect itself from the convulsions and seizures caused by electricity - so it takes higher doses of electricity to induce the brain seizures. When Susan’s cognitive ability decreased after ECT, her symptoms were interpreted as worsening depression - not ECT induced brain damage - and she was given more ECT, causing more brain damage.
Psychiatry calls this a treatment. Others call it barbaric.
But these are the facts:
Doctors don’t understand very much about the brain - for example, pharmaceutical manufacturers market antidepressant drugs on the idea that depression is a ‘chemical imbalance in your brain’ -- turns out, that’s not true, there is no evidence for a chemical imbalance as a cause of depression -- but that doesn’t stop 1,000s of unwitting doctors from prescribing them.
Doctors definitely don’t understand how electricity impacts the brain. Physicians don’t know how to treat the brain on any level beyond throwing powerful psych meds at it -- and they haven’t studied traumatic brain injury so they don’t know what symptoms to look for or how to recognize signs of injury -- yet they are allowed to put electricity through people’s brains.
Psychiatry, that embarrassing discipline of medicine that operates outside the usual rules of evidence based science or prioritizing patient safety, religiously defend their practice of jolting the brain with electricity so hard that it causes the brain to have a seizure. Like religion, it is based on faith, not facts.
In this episode, physician Susan Cunliffe gives an insider’s view of the UK medical system where their own data shows 1 in 5 ECT patients experiences severe and permanent brain damage. But that doesn’t stop powerful psychiatrists from continuing to electrocute people’s brains and call it ‘medical care’.
Listen to find out who Susan found to help her brain to heal, and what she’s doing to heal a broken medical system.
Connect with Dr Susan Cunliffe:
Twitter: @CunliffeSue
Resources:
Headway (UK) https://www.headway.org.uk/about-brain-injury/
Head Injury - book - Trevor Powell https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-Injury-Practical-Speechmark-Editions/dp/0863884512
Facebook:
Drop the Disorder: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1182483948461309
International support group ECT survivors:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/414257808688052?view=info&refid=18
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Aug 17, 2020
Monday Aug 17, 2020
Mack Doyle has been sickly since birth -- and along the way medicine gave her numerous diagnoses to explain her symptoms, none of which turned out to be correct.
When Mack’s allergy skin tests showed her positive to over 140 foods, grasses, and pollen, the doctor didn’t believe it. “Impossible” he said.
He told Mack she wasn’t allergic to anything, she just had irritable bowel syndrome. But Mack had ‘been there, done’ that with an IBS misdiagnosis before and was adamant she had allergies.
Turns out the patient was right -- she just needed a doctor who could connect the dots of Mack’s various symptoms that pointed to mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), essentially an overactive immune response by our mast cells.
Part of the problem of getting a diagnosis was that MCAS was not officially recognized until 2007, so even today very few physicians are aware of the disease. That means patients spend many years and a lot of money trying to get a diagnosis and treatment.
It also means a lot of undiagnosed MCAS patients face repeated gaslighting by physicians in a health care system that quickly defaults to the harmful trope ‘in your head’ for illnesses they can’t immediately diagnose.
Mack not only shares her health care journey experiences in finally getting a correct diagnosis, but also what she’s learned about the myriad ways MCAS can manifest.
If -- like me -- you have weird symptoms that doctors couldn’t explain or dismissed as ‘in your head’ -- then you’ll want to hear what Mack has learned about our mast cells and how you can manage them better.
Connect with Mack:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MackWithMast
GoFundMe: https://gofundme.com/f/help-mackenzie-fight-mast-cell-disease…
Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/MastCell
Personal Facebook: https://facebook.com/mackenzie.doyle.12
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Aug 10, 2020
Monday Aug 10, 2020
If you’re living with a complex chronic illness, you’ve probably had many medical appointments -- and probably experienced many medical errors, from the benign errors that did not impact your life, to potentially serious errors that will forever lower your quality of life.
When Charis Hill’s pain skyrocketed and health tanked and no doctor’s were providing a correct diagnosis, Charis reached out to their estranged father, expecting to get advice on living with a disability. What Charis didn’t expect was for their father to diagnose Charis with ankylosing spondylitis, or AS, an inflammatory disease that causes bones in the spine to fuse. This fusing makes the spine less flexible, can cause a lot of pain and greatly impact mobility.
As Charis’s body failed, Charis’s identity as an athlete slipped away -- and so began a journey into the external financial world of health care and health insurance systems -- and a journey into the internal emotional world of trauma and meaning and growth. A journey that is taking - and making - Charis into an unintended chronic illness advocate, giving voice and political clout to the medically marginalized.
In our interview - where we faced some minor periodic technical challenges, so please roll with the intermittent audio glitches - Charis tells how they reinvented themselves and learned to love the mobility devices like wheelchairs -- symbols that represent disability to the able in society. Charis shares how these ‘disability symbols’ are actually tools to participate in society, tools of freedom.
Connect with Charis Hill:
BeingCharis.com
Facebook: Charis Hill - Writer, Speaker, Advocate - Being Charis
https://www.facebook.com/BeingCharis
Global Healthy Living Campaign: https://www.ghlf.org/coronavirus-patient-support/
Spondylitis.org: https://spondylitis.org/resources-support/support-resources/
Becoming Incurable documentary:
https://www.becomingincurable.com
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Aug 03, 2020
Monday Aug 03, 2020
When Candia McCullough went in for routine hysterectomy surgery for her heavy periods, she was expecting the surgery to give her a better quality of life.
What she was not expecting - and did not consent - was to have a medical device implanted into her abdomen and have it attached to her spine, bladder and colon.
When Candia awoke from the surgery, the surgeon proudly told her he had implanted a plastic mesh in her abdomen to support her internal organs.
While the surgeon boasted about his surgical expertise, Candia was emotionally shocked he had done a medical device implant surgery without her consent, and physically immersed in pain as the plastic mesh dug into and perforated her internal organs.
As the plastic mesh gets warmed by the body, it degrades and releases toxic chemicals into Candia’s system. The plastic mesh also twists and pokes holes in Candia’s internal organs causing incredible constant pain - like 9 out of 10 on the pain scale - and often made worse by movement.
But instead of getting medical care and support for the damage done by the illegal mesh implanted without her consent, Candia was gaslighted by the medical system as they denied the plastic mesh could be causing her myriad symptoms and told Candia her physical pain and symptoms were psychosomatic. In doing this, the health ‘care’ system essentially deepened Candia’s trauma.
In this interview with Candia and her husband Ian, they recount the far reaching impact the plastic mesh implant has had on their lives, their marriage and their mental health.
Connect with Candia:
Monday Jul 27, 2020
Monday Jul 27, 2020
As we learned in part 1 of Rachel’s interview, she comes from a family of physicians, and when she was seriously injured by Accutane, a medication many teens and young adults take for acne, Rachel found herself at odds with her family’s complete buy-in to the corporate pharmaceutical narrative and their wholesale acceptance of Big Pharma’s so-called research.
All the doctors denied Accutane injured Rachel and diagnosed her as psychosomatic. Rachel’s family also didn’t believe her, calling into question her mental stability.
Not surprisingly Rachel felt doubly deceived by medicine and her family, and as pretty much any one who’s experienced a medical error can attest, when doctors and hospitals deny the error or the harm it caused, that invalidated trauma gets deepened.
In part 2, Rachel tells about the pressure from her family to abandon natural approaches to health and embrace ‘better living through chemistry’, including taking Accutane for moderate acne.
We then hear the hellish side effects Rachel has and continues to endure, what she learned when she took a deep dive into Accutane side effects and the pharmaceutical industry, and how she’s coping with through advocacy and education.
Connect with Rachel and community:
Accutane Long-Term Side Effects 3.3k members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/214733665588935/
Accutane Survivors, Roaccutane, Isotretinoin Injuries & Side Effects 10.7k members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AccutaneSurvivors/
Life After Accutane - A Group For People Damaged By Isotretinoin - 300 members (for accutane survivors only)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeafteraccutane/
RxPilld (our awareness platform for pharmaceutical injuries):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2FCCzGU8gWCFrzS5CbjCoQ
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Jul 20, 2020
Monday Jul 20, 2020
Growing up in an affluent community, but as the only non-white kid in her school, Rachel Winters learned early how our social narratives, be they ethnic or medical, can have profound impacts on our life trajectory.
Coming from a family of physicians with a ‘better living through chemistry’ approach to medicine and pharmaceuticals, Rachel’s trust in the medical system was deeply ingrained from an early age.
Her father assured her that medications were safe, and encouraged Rachel to not feel ashamed about taking pharmaceuticals. When Rachel had trouble sleeping, her mother shared her own sleeping medications. When Rachel had a foot issue and wanted a simple out patient treatment, her father insisted on ‘proven’ invasive and disabling surgery.
So when Rachel’s body became dependent on medication given for an erroneous diagnosis, and her foot surgery induced blood curdling screaming pain, Rachel began to see the cavernous cracks in the health care system. She realized she had been repeatedly betrayed by so-called evidence based medicine. In fact, health care is often decision based evidence making.
When Rache’s family dismissed the medication side effects and her physical symptoms as psychological, the sense of medical and familial betrayal deepened.
In part 1 of this interview Rachel shares how her family of physicians shaped her trust in the scientific process and medical establishment, but it was her real world experience of multiple medical errors that opened her eyes to the reality of health care, big pharma, and the role of physicians in perpetuating profits over people.
Connect with Rachel and community:
Accutane Long-Term Side Effects 3.3k members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/214733665588935/
Accutane Survivors, Roaccutane, Isotretinoin Injuries & Side Effects 10.7k members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AccutaneSurvivors/
Life After Accutane - A Group For People Damaged By Isotretinoin - 300 members (for accutane survivors only)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeafteraccutane/
RxPilld (our awareness platform for pharmaceutical injuries):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2FCCzGU8gWCFrzS5CbjCoQ
Be a podcast patron
Support Medical Error Interviews on Patreon by becoming a Patron for $2 / month for audio versions.
Premium Patrons get access to video versions of podcasts for $5 / month.
Be my Guest
I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.
Monday Jul 13, 2020
Monday Jul 13, 2020
When I saw that Chandra Pasma was interviewed by media outlets, and that she lead the push for health officials to acknowledge and act upon patients still sick with COVID, I knew I needed to reach out to her and find out her experience with COVID and the health care system.
While the medical system has long known, but rarely acknowledged, that some people don’t recover from viral infections, and instead continue to experience a wide range of neurological symptoms, the COVID pandemic - and patient advocates like Chandra - are forcing health care systems to address the research, treatment and care of long haul COVID patients, and by extension, the millions of others who previously got sick with ‘the flu’, but remained sick -- sometimes so ill, they are house and bed bound, requiring total personal support.
You may be asking yourself: if medicine has known for a long time some people don’t recover from viral infections, why haven’t they been researching it?
Mostly it is because there is a wide spread and embedded medical error in the medical system -- it is so embedded, most physicians are blind to it. Just like fish don’t see water.
This institutional error is the physician’s ingrained habit of telling patients with physical symptoms with no obvious cause, that they are ‘all in your head’. This is known informally in patient circles as gaslighting. It is more formally called medical harm. And it is a pandemic unto itself.
But with millions of people infected with COVID, and early reports that at least 1 in 10 are not recovering, it will be near impossible for physicians to dismiss long haul COVID patients’ symptoms as ‘all in your head’.
The cruel irony is that for at least 3 decades, biological research on people with post viral illnesses, like MEcfs and SARS, had been mostly non-existent. And we can thank psychiatry, the least reputable division of medicine, for impeding biological research funding, and instead, embedding medical error in the form of gaslighting, in health care systems around the world.
So this may be one of the ‘good’ things that come out of the COVID pandemic: stopping the medical harm from physicians and psychiatrists of patients who don’t recover from viral infections.
Connect with Chandra Pasma on twitter: @ChandraPasma
Long Covid Facebook:
COVID Long Haulers Support Group Canada
https://www.facebook.com/groups/920314451799658
COVID Long Haulers Canada:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/950023472135178
Body Politic - COVID support group: https://www.wearebodypolitic.com/covid19
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I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.
If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description: RemediesPodcast@gmail.com
Need a Counsellor?
Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.
If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.
**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.**
Email me to learn more or book an appointment: RemediesOnlineCounseling@gmail.com
Scott Simpson:
Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete
I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.
I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.
Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.
I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.
Counseling / Research
I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here.
Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.
Patient Advocacy
I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.
I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.
Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.
My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.