Archive for the ‘pt/doc co-care’ Category

Calling All Physicians: Support the Participatory Medicine Movement

March 10, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, pt/doc co-care · 2 Comments

Participatory Medicine is a new paradigm in healthcare, one that promises to enhance healthcare efficiency, transform the experience for both the patient and their providers, and improve healthcare outcomes. This cultural shift requires adaptation among healthcare professionals (including physicians) as well as patients and caregivers.

And yet changing culture amongst physicians remains challenging, for a variety of reasons (some good, some not so good). For example, it takes an average of 17 years until physicians adopt proven best practices. Hopefully, Participatory Medicine won’t take so long.

Yet, there are many of my colleagues who are already adherents to the model of Participatory Medicine, although they may not call it that. Read more

Patient to doctor: “Why aren’t you harder on me?”

March 8, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, pt/doc co-care · 6 Comments

A joint post by e-Patient Dave and Dr. Danny Sands, written from alternating points of view.

Danny: An important moment happened a few months ago during office hours – important because it brought a profound shift in Dave’s view of the doctor-patient relationship. And that’s a vital part of participatory medicine. Read more

The e-Patient Salute

February 12, 2010 · Filed Under positive patterns, pt/doc co-care · 3 Comments

Can you SEE the E?

Participatory Medicine in Time magazine

February 1, 2010 · Filed Under news & gossip, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, pts as teachers, reforming hc, trends & principles · 2 Comments

Re Time’s article “Group Therapy” in the February 8, 2010 issue, arriving on newsstands now:

Time’s freelance reporter Bonnie Rochman contacted our Susannah Fox to discuss her remarks at the Institute of Medicine last October. Read more

Unleash the Hot Talent: A Letter from a Patient

January 20, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, pt/doc co-care · 7 Comments

This is a guest post from Christine Kraft, Twitter friend @ChristineKraft. She’s a pensive, musey blogger at CocoVillage, and “wicked smaht,” as we say in Boston. She’s also the one who introduced us to Regina Holliday last year.

She recognizes talent when she sees it – and here, she plays the role of patient as ingenue, imploring the care team to take the leash off her potential.
__________

An appeal for Participatory Medicine,
inspired by Diva e-Patient friends and colleagues:

***

January 2010

Dear Wonderful Doctor and Care Team,

I am writing to suggest that you cast me in the most important performance of my life: My Health Care Crisis.

I realize you hardly know me and that you can’t really stop to get to know me at this point because there is a long line of folks just like me waiting for your services… But since we’re suddenly on a kind of “Fast Track” to get to know my body (given last week’s diagnosis), I was hoping that you’d at least consider giving me a supporting role in my upcoming treatment.

I’ll play it straight; no Femme Fatal, Gypsy Rose Lee, or Little Lost Soul. Nope, I’ll go for a completely modern (dare I say, “sexy”) evolving archetype, The Empowered Patient.

I am sure you have questions. And yes, I am a rookie. I cannot predict with the exactness of a doctor like you the outcome of my involvement in my care. But acknowledging that I have a role would be a powerful component in the show. And this is a kind of show, Doctor, isn’t it?

What do you say? Can you accept a wee bit of showmanship from the patient side while you miraculously cut that large tumor out of my endometrial liner and administer powerful technology reserved for only the most specially trained among us? This *is* high drama but I promise I won’t be too saccharine or too melancholy. I’ll take the pain meds as directed and open up to the fear as best as I can.

Doctor, if I haven’t made it precisely, exactly, clear to you yet, I think we make a great team. You’ve gotta let me show you what I’ve got.

Sincerely,
Your Patient

***

Originally posted on her blog, 1/8/2010.

PeoplesPharmacy.com in NYTimes: “Not All Drugs Are the Same After All”

December 20, 2009 · Filed Under Why PM, news & gossip, pt/doc co-care, trends & principles · 6 Comments

We’re thrilled to see our Joe and Terry Graedon, of PeoplesPharmacy.com, in the New York Times (“Not All Drugs Are the Same After All”) telling a truth that the FDA hasn’t figured out: generics don’t always work the same as the brand name drug.

Joe and Terry exemplify the participatory medicine movement. He’s a pharmacologist, and she’s a PhD medical anthropologist, studying what people do in a given culture (in this case, ours). Our founder “Doc Tom” Ferguson lists them as his advisors in his White Paper’s acknowledgements.

Theirs is a story of conversion based on undeniable evidence gained by listening to patients: Read more

What part of “Give us our damn data” do you not understand?

December 15, 2009 · Filed Under hc's problem list, medical records, policy issues, pt/doc co-care · 45 Comments

Yesterday I attended “How Access to Information Can Empower Patients and their Caregivers,” conducted by the Consumer Partnership for eHealth. CPeH is an alliance of stakeholder groups sponsored by the National Partnership for Women and Families. It has no web site of its own – it’s just a Partnership for Consumer eHealth (duh), convening to work on accomplishing good health through IT – especially health data.

An incredible moment (and I don’t say that often) happened after three physicians presented how their organizations are giving patients access to their medical records online. Their presentations were all encouraging. But during Q&A we got down to the nitty details, and comments from two physicians revealed a well-meaning attitude that I can only describe as protective and paternal:

Concern about emotional impact of bad news
Concern about the difficulty of interpreting some reports: “Even I can’t understand radiology reports sometimes.”

Regina Holliday was there – the “73 Cents” artist whose husband died of kidney cancer in June. Ted Eytan MD, an avid advocate of patient empowerment, asked her thoughts. With a cold clear look in her eye she said: Read more

Making Healthcare Better through Participatory Medicine

December 10, 2009 · Filed Under Why PM, net-friendly docs, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc · 3 Comments

There’s new validation that participatory medicine is an idea whose time has come: the co-chairs of the Society for Participatory Medicine (my primary physician Dr. Danny Sands and I) are on this year’s list of 20 People Who Make Healthcare Better, an annual feature of HealthLeaders magazine.

Photo courtesy of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

With Dr. Sands in an examining room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (photo courtesy of BIDMC)

We want to acknowledge some of the pioneers who paved the way. Danny said an email that “people like e-patients.net founder “Doc Tom” Ferguson, Tom Delbanco, Warner Slack, and others started it. I’m standing on their shoulders. I only helped you start yourself.”

Our Bodies Ourselves: support this pioneer of empowered, participatory healthcare

December 5, 2009 · Filed Under Why PM, e-pts resources, policy issues, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc, trends & principles · 8 Comments

Some people think e-patient ideas are new. They’re not. I’d like to give credit to a noble antecedent, and ask for your support.

Shortly after I discovered this blog (February ‘08) I recognized two strong precedents from earlier in my life: Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby Book (opening words: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do,”) and Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Dr. Spock was published a few years before me. Our Bodies, Ourselves came along a year after I graduated college.

About its origins, Wikipedia says:

MITSS: Much-needed support after medical errors

November 15, 2009 · Filed Under Why PM, ethics, hc's problem list, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc · 2 Comments

Ten years ago this week, 11/18/99, Linda Kenney was scheduled for ankle replacement surgery. She woke up three days later in the ICU. Her chest had been cut open. She was in the hospital ten days.

And nobody talked about what had happened.

What had happened is that the nerve block administered to her ankle (a local anesthetic) had accidentally entered her blood. It quickly hit her heart, which was promptly anesthetized and stopped pumping.
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