Embracing culture, ownership and change are catalysts for the future

I must admit I have been searching for what to write about next. So many things have come to my mind, and I think it is time to speak about the title of this article and how I was able to narrow this down. I hope you enjoy it and find it applicable not only in a professional way but on a personal note as well.

We are faced every day with changes. Some of those changes come easy and others not so easy. It is how we embrace these changes, our mindset or what we call at the hospital “our culture,” that makes a huge difference in how healthy we accept changes that we face.

We are all aging; we are faced with so many physical health changes. In the years of practice, I have seen so many people who thought they were healthy now faced with unforeseen illnesses and conditions. I look back at my personal experience and think to myself: I thought of myself as a healthy individual, but I quickly learned that health and genetics play a dual role in what we think of as healthy. You might be wondering why we ask you all those questions like when your last mammogram was, Pap, A1c, or colonoscopy, or you might be wondering why you are getting calls to come in for lab work. I can assure it is not a ploy to get your money.

We understand to come in takes a copay and time away from your busy schedule and family. As family practice providers we are experts on what we call in the field as primary prevention. The difference when I am in the emergency room is we take care of acute issues, which are often a result of the inadequacy of the lack of going to see your primary provider regularly, a result of lack of primary prevention. Primary prevention means catching problems before they happen. Secondary prevention is what I do in the ER and prevent them from getting worse.

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