Covid Camper 12: Hello everybody, my name is John Blanchard from SALTA Direct Primary Care and today is April 9th. It’s day number 17 in the COVID Camper. I hope everyone is doing well out there. Today I would like to cover questions are about some of the terminology we are hearing in the news. It is probably not a good idea to watch the news all day, but it is important that you understand some of the terminology to describe what is going on.
I have a lot of questions about these things mean. One of the things they are talking about is an antibody test. This is a type of blood test to detect whether someone has been exposed to the COVID or have had COVID and who may be immune to COVID. It is important to know this because those people then could be released to go outside and go back to work.
Source trace testing: will be very important once we life this quarantine so that we can quickly identify a case of COVID and who they exposed to then quarantine those exposed and stop the spread.
Herd immunity: one of the big concerns we have right now is if there isn’t a large number of people in the community who have antibodies to this or who are resistant to it who have had it and recovered or maybe didn’t even have symptoms but have antibodies to it which can happen if we don’t have a large number of people in the community who have immunity then when we release the quarantine there could be a second wave that happens. This means the virus starts transmitting widely in the community again leading to another large number of people needing hospitalization again.
Point-of-care testing: this is a test that Abbott came out with that allows us in right in my office or in other doctor’s offices to test directly for COVID. It is a swab that goes into the nose, and you put in the kit and can detect if you have COVID within 15 minutes. We will have these in doctors’ offices hopefully soon.
Clinical trial: it is very important that we do trials on treatment to make sure they are safe and effective. We don’t want to rush because of fear to use widespread treatments for people that may have side effects we’ve talked about that in previous videos some of these treatments can have serious side effects like hydroxychloroquine and others that we need to do trials to know that one group got a medication another group didn’t and the group that received the medication got better and it wasn’t just due to chance and it was actually the medication and showing that it is safe.
One of the things that I hope comes out of this is related to mindfulness. All of us want a good life, we all have a different perspective of this, but what is a good life? From my perspective a good life is feeling a sense of peace, joyfulness, happiness, and healthy relationships. If we want a good life it is driven by actions. Our actions are largely driven by our emotions, our emotions are our feelings. So, if we feel a certain way it drives us to act a certain way and our feelings are driven by our thoughts. So, thoughts cause feelings, feelings cause actions, and actions determine your life. So, if you want a good life, you start with a good thought. I am covering different thought distortions that can interfere with having a goal to have good life. One of the thought distortions is called should statement. If you catch yourself saying should, or out to, or must, then that is a thought distortion. So, you can use should statements as it pertains to yourself or to someone else, but they are almost always a thought distortion. Some may say, “I should have done better on that test” or “I must lose weight to look as good as I should”. These statements when applied to yourself fuels feelings of guilt and shame. This is not a healthy feeling when they’re not accurately reflected. Clearly sometimes we do or say something that will leave us feeling guilty or feel shame for that’s our conscience. But should statements be not because of this, they often drive the guilt and shame. When you apply it to someone else it drives frustrations and anger in the relationships.
One reason why I like being a direct primary care doctor is that we can provide care according to a person’s needs. So, a lot of people now today are going to urgent cares. They are getting care online and they are doing that because it is convenient. What we try to do in direct primary care is meet the delivery needs for our patients. A lot of people want to get in and get right out so we make that appointment very quickly and they don’t have to wait a week to get the appointment, they don’t have to wait in the waiting room. Other times people want to spend more time with us so we can have a visit that goes for 30 to 60 minutes and address all their needs in one visit. We will not send you out telling you that you can only address one need during your visit so you must make an appointment and come back. Or sometimes people just want a phone conversation or video visits. We give access to our patients 24 hours a day, so they can reach us anytime they want for urgent care needs that happen after hours or weekends.
If you want to learn how direct primary care can work for you, feel free to call Kyle at 248.922.3076. Kyle can answer all your questions and see what six of our locations is best for you or your company near you! You can also follow us on Facebook @salta_directprimarycare. OR you can search us on Google stating, “direct primary care near me!” or join right on our website at saltadirect.com
Stay safe out there! Love each other and we will see you again soon!
