Medical Information: Making TBI Information Mandatory

TBI Medical Information or Lack There Of: Craig Part Thirty Three 

I discussed with Craig the resistance that the medical staff is to new TBI Medical Information and what we can do to make it mandatory for them to listen.

The  Importance of Medical Information Given by TBI Survivors

Well, here’s the issue.  Doctors are remarkably resistant to learning information after they leave their medical education except through the long-term judgment and wisdom they get from listening to people – eventually.  How do we change the medical structure, the medical education and the medical process as far as medical information so that doctors are forced to listen – to the brain-injured stories so that they get it the medical information from the TBI survivors? How do we get them to understand that this is a very critical period and the advice they could give is so important? 

I think we have a couple of problems there.  Number one, it seems health care is getting more toward quantity versus quality and Affordable Healthcare Act is going to create pressure on that.  I think training the personnel to advocate.  Here is what could happen, because you can’t tell them everything but send them out with information protocol in each state.

Brent Hughes over in New York is to my knowledge passing our first protocol and we’re going to hopefully copy that.   It’s an ABC checklist the doctors have to conform to and make sure that people leave with the information.

Families, yeah, start in school, I think, getting all the teachers to know what’s going on.   That’s been my goal in Washington, because teachers spend more time with our kids than we do.  If teachers think this, they’re always taking drugs and you know it’s not always drugs, you know.  And if it is drugs why are they using the drugs? I think we got to get the people who are in contact with our kids most.

Doctors aren’t going to do it.  You can pass the laws to make them do it, but I think it’s the teachers and the families that have to know what’s going on and once they know what’s going on, just like cancer, it’s no longer a hidden epidemic.

Is it a matter of the caregiver, demanding the resources or the patient demanding the resources of medical information?

Yeah.  It’s a matter of making it a law.  We have a law, Era’s law, they have laws that are in place to do that but they’re not being effective.

I think 2‑1‑1 is our key.  I mean I’m not all that hot on 2‑1‑1 but it is public, it is, out there and I think promoting that, I mean, look at our TBI-WA it’s going to be live in 12 states by middle of fall.

2‑1‑1 is what?

You dial like 9‑1‑1, you get emergency 2‑1‑1, you get resources.  And it’s 85 percent of the country’s wired for that right now and so we’re watching that when we launched the Peer Mentor Network.

Craig’s Story Concludes in Part Thirty Four –  Hope for TBI Despair – You are not Alone