Checking Into the Hospital Experience

Dear Readers:

This month we hang out at the hospital. It’s only appropriate that we start out by going to med school. Times reporter Marcida Dodson writes about the “standardized patient” programs now in place at many medical training facilities, including our five med schools in Southern California. These programs allow future docs to practice their skills on people who play patients.

Later this month, we’ll guide you through hospital consent forms; we’ll offer survival tips if you’re a patient with well-meaning friends who want to party like it’s 1999; and we’ll suggest what kinds of identification you should carry in case you ever wind up in a hospital and can’t speak for yourself.

Don’t miss today’s “How I Did It,” by Craig Willis, who bought a new Jeep with the money he saved by reducing his food budget from $6,000 to $2,000 a year--and possibly saved his life, too, by reducing his weight by 245 pounds. He took a drastic first step by having his stomach stapled, but he knew that he’d only get really healthy if he changed his lifestyle.

See you next month,