Health

From Health magazine
I started keeping a diary when I was 10 years old and continued to do so until I was 25. Every year, on either New Years Day or my February birthday, I would write down a list of goals for the upcoming year.

Looking through my decades worth of resolutions, I wonder, Could now be the perfect time to call a do-over and fulfill past promises? Or is it, Once a failure, always a failure? Several of the resolutions—especially those made between the ages of 10 and 13—seemed silly on the surface but addressed fundamental personal shortcomings that Im now ready to face and fix.

1983: Take better care of my Cabbage Patch Kids.
2009 update: Take better care of my car, computer, clothing, etc., so I dont have to blow the budget on replacements.

1985: Stop talking about Michael Jackson so much.
2009 update: Stop talking so much, in general, and be a better listener.

1986: Get the right haircut so it looks good every single day.
2009 update: Get the right haircut so it looks good every single day without the benefit of a $50 salon blowout. (Im 35 years old, for goodness sake, and should know by now how to do my own hair.)

Its been a decade since Ive made an official list, perhaps because Ive come to see self-improvement as an ongoing process, not something that needs to be kick-started every year. When I brought up the subject of drafting these lists with my friends, I was met by a chorus of groans and Im-so-over-its. They, too, have stopped putting goals in writing because such lists often end up as taunting exercises in futility. “Instead, I make and break resolutions on a daily basis,” said Genevieve, summing up the consensus. “I say, ‘Ill be kinder, ‘I wont yell at my kids, ‘Ill exercise every day … I could go on.”

Opting out of grand annual resolutions doesnt mean were copping out, though. Rather, were taking a more day-to-day approach to self-improvement, continually evolving the goal (moving the goalpost, even), and celebrating the small victories along the way. When I make good on microgoals like Genevieves (hitting the gym, throwing together a hot-and-healthy meal), right away I feel happier, healthier, better organized, more connected with my family. Instant gratification! Whats more, because my daily targets arent made “official,” I dont feel as guilty when I slip up. So when Im having an off day and catch myself shrieking at my son, skipping the gym, and ordering take-out, I dont feel debilitated by defeat. I simply accept these lapses as part of being human, and move on—theres always opportunity to make a fresh start the next day.

And that means Im finally making good on a promise I made to myself year after year until I turned 25: a call for self-kindness. Its certainly a worthy ambition for anyone, at any age. But now, rather than writing it on a list of resolutions, Im inscribing this message in my mind and heart, and trusting myself to follow it. And if I dont, well, theres always tomorrow.

Back when I was a magazine editor, I once made a production mistake so horrendous that the back cover fell off of all 300,000 copies on the newsstand. Its the only time Ive ever cried at work. I desperately wanted to slink away into a hole and hide for the next decade, at least.

How about you? Ever made a huge blunder at the office? Maybe you took a foolhardy risk with the companys money, accidentally revealed a piece of confidential medical information about a colleague, or made a big faux pas with the boss. No one is perfect, as much as each of us might like to be, so its important to learn the best way to repair damage and move on in a positive way. Through hard-won experience, Ive come to see that there are three key steps.

1. Apologize the right way
You may want to get the apologizing over with by saying a quick “Im sorry.” But it sometimes can make matters worse because you may end up sounding insincere. In fact, theres an art form to a good apology, one that will create closure for you and anyone affected by your actions. First, acknowledge your blunder: “Yes, I forgot to check the figures.” Next, inquire about the impact your mistake had: “What effect did that have on you?” Third, explain yourself—not in a defensive way but to offer context: “I see that I was rushing. Next time Ill be sure to focus more.” Finally, inquire about how to make amends: “What can I do to fix this? Should I send a letter of apology to the client?” When you include each of these parts to your apology, you actually learn from the situation, and the other person understands that you take your mistakes seriously and handle them maturely.

2. Look to the future
If youre stewing over a mistake, remind yourself of something I recently heard personal-finance expert Suze Orman say: “You cant change what youve done, only what youre going to do.” Its a perfect message for giving up on the “if onlys” and “I should haves” that can drag you down. Instead of kicking yourself, figure out what you can do to avoid making the same mess-up again.

3. See the bright side
You can gain patience, humility, and even a greater sense of responsibility from a misstep. My big goof was one of the best lessons I ever got in letting go of perfectionism. When I summoned the courage to tell the publisher what Id done, he said, “Everyone messes up. Let it go.” Im much better at that now.

IstockphotoThe world is full of things that dont make sense. Among these, if you ask me, are flower remedies.

Flower remedies were created in 1930 by a sickly British surgeon named Edward Bach who closed his London practice when he was 43 and moved to Wales. There he spent lots of time in his garden and decided that a dewdrop, when heated by the sun, could acquire the healing properties of the plant it touched. Follow me so far?

During the next four years, the good doctor wrote a book, Heal Thyself, which suggests that disease emanates from “being at odds with ones spiritual purpose.” He also perfected a line of 38 remedies made from flowers. The process, as I understand it, is that a single flower is placed in pure spring water in the sun. That water is then diluted with more water, preserved with alcohol, and bottled.

How flower remedies are supposed to work
The remedies defy my ability to make sense of them—unlike herbs, which contain phytochemicals that have documented physical effects on the body, or homeopathy, in which a miniscule amount of medicine is used to trigger healing. Those, I understand.

Flower remedies target emotional mind-sets instead of physical conditions, and practitioners theorize that when you set your emotional house in order, healing commences.

Heres where it gets tricky: According to flower-remedy philosophy, different flowers have different attributes that can ease human emotional turmoil. For example, the plant impatiens wilts rapidly when dry, and its flowers close. Voilà ! Its the ideal remedy for someone whos impatient.

OK, that I get, sort of. But other qualities (all of which Bach is said to have observed in his garden) seem pretty inscrutable to me—wild rose, for example, is a remedy for people who are apathetic and disinterested; holly helps people who feel angry or want revenge.

A shrink helps me make sense of it all
Denise Lamothe, PhD, from Exeter, N.H., is a clinical psychologist and author of Taming of the Chew: A Holistic Guide to Stopping Compulsive Eating, who uses flower remedies in her practice. Though she wasnt able to help me connect the scientific dots when I asked her how the remedies work, she did enlighten me with two interesting stories about how shes used the remedies in her practice.

One patient, whom Lamothe was treating with flower remedies for an eating disorder, called her in a panic one day. “I binged on Thursday,” the patient reported. “I really overate.” When Lamothe asked what shed eaten, she replied, “Three clementines.” Lamothe says this was huge progress for her patient, who prior to using flower remedies would have baked and eaten an entire cake or a dozen muffins.

“Even though my patient still ‘binged, I believe the flower remedies helped her make healthier choices,” Lamothe says.

Lamothe reports that shes even used flower remedies on her registered therapy dog, a Westie named Sapphi. Out of the blue, the dog began compulsively licking her paws, a condition known as “overgrooming.” Lamothe gave her a few drops of the remedy crab apple, used for people who feel “unclean, ashamed, or embarrassed about their appearance,” and just like that, Sapphis licking problem ceased.

“Dogs arent influenced by the placebo effect,” Lamothe tells me, “so obviously, on some level, these remedies work.”

Though the science on flower remedies is nonexistent, and clinical studies fail to show a benefit for improving psychological problems or pain, stranger things have happened. If taking a simple, inexpensive flower remedy can help prevent someone from chowing down on an entire cake at a single sitting, I say it might be worth a try.

To that end, Bach developed the Emotional Eating Support Kit, which contains three different flower remedies to nip binges in the bud. It contains crab apple, to help you accept imperfections and feel better about yourself; cherry plum, which supports rational choices; and chestnut bud, which helps you observe mistakes so you can learn from them and move on. Find Bach's remedies at health-food stores and read more about them at bachremedies.com.

TUESDAY, Sept. 22, 2009 (Health.com) — In 2007, a resident surgeon snapped a picture of a patients tattoo—the words Hot Rod on his penis—and shared it with colleagues, making international news when the story was leaked to the press. At least the resident didnt post the picture on the Internet.

A new survey suggests that with the rise of blogging and sites like Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube, such a thing could happen. In fact, 60% of medical schools have had students post inappropriate or unprofessional information on the Web, according to a study in the September 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Most of the time, the information was related to the student's own behavior, including drunken, drug-related, or sexually suggestive images or comments, as well as the use of profanity or discriminatory language. But six schools, or 13%, reported incidents in the past year that involved content that violated patient privacy. For example, some students blogged about their experiences with enough detail to identify patients, and one student posted patient details on Facebook. Most of the time other trainees told the dean about the indiscretions, but in two cases, patients or their families blew the whistle.

“We expected to find incidents of unprofessionalism, but the number was higher than expected," says lead study author Katherine C. Chretien, MD, of the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center.

Less than half of schools currently have policies in place to police or punish such behavior.

In the study, the researchers sent out anonymous surveys to medical school deans or their representatives at each institution in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)—a total of 130 schools. Of the 78 schools that responded, 47 reported ever having an incident. In the previous year, 13% of those schools reported no incidents, 78% had fewer than 5 incidents, 7% reported 5 to 15 incidents, and 2% had some incidents but did not know exactly how many.

Next Page: Three students expelled [ pagebreak ]Of those that reported an incident and responded to the question about disciplinary actions, 30 gave informal warnings and three students were expelled. Overall, 38% of the schools had policies in place that cover unprofessional online behavior and 11% of the schools without such policies were working on developing one.

Deans who reported incidents were more likely to have such a policy in place, the survey found.

“This is a pretty new issue for medicine,” Dr. Chretien says. “We need to have a discussion about what kind of information is appropriate to be out there and what defines medical professionalism in the online world."

Other professions are also grappling with the same types of issues, she says. “The difference with medicine is that we have patients privacy to maintain, and that is critical; doctors have also been held to a higher moral standard, at least historically.

"There needs to be better education in medical schools about protecting patient privacy on the Internet because even if [students] dont use direct patient identifiers, you can still identify someone with certain characteristics,” she says.

Arthur Caplan, PhD, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, says he was surprised that more institutions had not begun to adopt policies about the Internet. “Todays medical students think of the online world as freewheeling and open-ended with no rules, and we have to educate them that they cant take that attitude when discussing their patients or personal information,” he says.

Next Page: Price should be suspension, expulsion, expert says [ pagebreak ]Medical students may be accustomed to being free with their thoughts and photos on the Web, but the Internet is not a free-fly zone for future doctors. The only way to reign in this behavior is to punish violators, Caplan says. “First-time violators should get suspended, which is serious stuff, and second-time violators are out,“ he explains. “We also need to remind and teach students what medical privacy is in terms of the Internet.”

Jordan Cohen, MD, a professor of medicine at George Washington University and a former president of the AAMC, says he finds the study results not all that surprising, given the popularity of social-networking sites.

“Its clearly an area that should be addressed by schools,” he says. “The Internet needs to be included in examples of potential areas where unprofessional behavior can occur."