Lessons from my left foot.
A personal experience with a chronic foot injury taught me 4 lessons about living with a chronic condition: people with chronic conditions may blame themselves, may feel guilty that other people have to help them, often have a depression that may be worse than the chronic condition, and may lose confidence in their capacity to do anything useful in life. These feelings need to be elicited and addressed when family physicians provide care to people with chronic conditions.
Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA. TBodenheimer@fcm.ucsf.edu
Thomas
T
Bodenheimer
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D018409:Foot Injuries / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*; D013997:Time Factors