advocate bad practices

When Clients Lie

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Years ago, I hosted a radio show where I had the opportunity to interview medical providers from many specialties about their work with patients. One of the recurring themes was that “Patients lie.” Now – you might wonder why that would become a theme, but the answer is quite simple. It was important to discuss it during the show because smart patients need to know that their providers assume they are lying as a part of the diagnoses or treatment they provide. (Good advice for smart advocates, too.) Here are some examples: An anesthesiologist told me that patients are always …

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Mixed Messages Are Just a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen

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A few weeks ago, I wrote Fool Me Once, Shame on You, But Fool Me Twice about the problems that can hurt patient-clients which also hurt our profession because they violate our ethical principles and best practices. Those problems range from advocates working beyond their own abilities to help clients because they may not have the experience or education to do so, to selling medical products on their websites, and others. Today we’re looking at the promised Example #2 of this problem in hopes of a hard stop. That problem: the danger of mixed messages. As stated in the Fool …

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Fool Me Once, Shame on You, But Fool Me Twice….

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From bold-faced lies to misrepresentation – facts that aren’t facts, withholding information, skirting the code of ethics, and shades of truth – honesty and the advocacy business have been on my mind. This topic was actually triggered by something that has nothing to do with advocacy at all, something that seems relatively innocuous, but then, maybe not-so-innocuous at all: the purchase of a 5-lb bag of sugar to bake holiday cookies last December. Now a 5-lb bag of sugar has always been a 5-lb bag of sugar and has yielded a certain number of batches of cookies. I’ve been buying …

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Step Aside Pollyanna! There’s No Room Here for You

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This is a message with a little tough love for some of the folks I encounter – Pollyannas – who are choosing advocacy as career move. Sorry Pollyanna – but there is no room for you in patient advocacy. You have a choice: you can either learn to overcome your inner Pollyanna or you can find yourself another profession. Pollyannaism can too easily get in the way of the professionalism required of good, competent advocates, and can result in deficient service to clients. The Pollyanna Advocate Pollyanna is a fictional character from children’s literature, who is known for always being …

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Alone, But Not by Yourself

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“But she is so upset with me now!” That was the response from an advocate who wrote to me after an unpleasant encounter with a former client. Even though they had not worked together for more than a year, the client had contacted the advocate to ask for copies of her medical records. The client knew the advocate had acquired them when they worked together, she needed them, and she didn’t want to pay for them again. Fair request, certainly. The advocate should have been able to turn them over to the client quite easily, either electronically or on paper…. …

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8 Ways Your Advocacy Practice May Be Like The Giving Tree

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(Channeling the Plain White T’s here…) The book is a childhood classic, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. It tells the story of a tree that gives all it has to a boy as he grows from little boyhood to adulthood. From providing shade and a place to climb, to allowing the boy to sell the apples it yields, to finally letting the boy (now a man) cut it down to build a house, and then later build a boat out of it. In the end, when the tree has nothing left to give, “Boy” simply sits on the Giving Tree’s …

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Can an Advocate Do More Harm Than Good?

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Yes, sadly (although rarely) a patient advocate might do more harm than good. I was reminded of this recently when I heard from an APHA member who had picked up the ball from another advocate (not an APHA member) who had totally messed up the work a client-patient needed to have done – an advocate who had actually made the client’s situation worse. The problem-creating advocate had been working with her client through a hospitalization. As far as we know, that work went well. Her core business is medical-navigational advocacy. However, later, when the client’s hospital bill arrived, the client …

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