Hopefully, you are familiar with the patient Bill of Rights that was drafted by the federal government’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry in the late 1990s. It was created with the following three overarching goals:1 •...
When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at the age of 25, one of my first concerns was how it would impact my ability to start a family. Though I was lucky to have an extremely supportive rheumatology team, I still felt there was an acute lack of...
As rheumatology nurses, we see many patients in what should be the prime years of their lives. In their 20s or 30s, I currently have numerous recently married women in my practice as patients who have a new diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), dealing them a...
Being a new parent is never easy, but it can be especially challenging for patients with a chronic disease such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Here are some tips I have given to my patients with RA over the years—I hope you find them helpful for use in your practice!...
TK was an 8-year-old female who presented to our pediatric rheumatology clinic about a year ago with a positive antinuclear antibody (ANA) test result (1:320), general fatigue, and a recent preliminary diagnosis of pediatric systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) that was...
"SLE IS LIKE A GREY WOLF LURKING AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS, WAITING PATIENTLY TO ATTACK AN INDIVIDUAL’S BLOODSTREAM WHEN IT IDENTIFIES AN OPPORTUNITY..." Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) has been called “The Great Imposter.” A sneaky disease that frequently changes...
When I met JP, she had just turned 22 years old. She had been living with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) since the age of 13, suffering through many ups and downs.As with every other young lupus patient I see, JP had extremely aggressive disease. Since being...
I work in a university-based rheumatology practice that includes an inpatient team that sees patients on the rheumatology service or consults on patients admitted to other services within our system.Three years ago, our team was called in for a consult on SJ, a...
One of our office’s most interesting and complicated juvenile spondyloarthritis (SpA) cases involved AZ, who presented to us as a 13-year-old male with a 3-year history of bilateral hip pain and approximately 6 months after bilateral hip pinning for slipped capital...
GV is a 28-year-old female social worker who presented to my clinic in January as a new patient. During our initial conversation, she said she suffered from regular joint pain since her late teens, with her hips often bothering her so much at night that she slept with...