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

“Are You Safe?” patient safety awareness video

August 28, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, e-pts resources, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care · 4 Comments

Today I’m participating in a workshop, “Engaging Minority Communities in Safer Healthcare,” organized by MITSS (Medically Induced Trauma Support Services), a Boston non-profit I’ve written about before.

The current speaker is Lisa O’Connor, VP of Nursing at Boston Medical Center. She just showed this four minute safety awareness video, produced by Quantros. Much of its content will be familiar to our readers here (the frequency of medical errors and hospital acquired infections), but I’m posting it here because of its good, concrete, specific actions every patient should know. That part starts around 2:30. (My highlights below.)

“How to become a more effective e-patient” (and clinician): lecture at Duke by Dr. Charles Smith

August 19, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, key people, net-friendly docs, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care · 6 Comments

Well, here’s a treat: Dr. Charles Smith, a founder of the Society for Participatory Medicine, recently gave a lecture at Duke titled “How to Become a More Effective e-Patient.” Here it is, in four YouTube segments.

“Charlie,” as we all call him, is a wonderful guy. He’s co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Participatory Medicine and was Doc Tom Ferguson’s physician. He’s been walking this walk for many years, and here he shares his personal advice – not just for patients but for health professionals who want to learn this participatory thing.

(The “Joe & Terry” he mentions are our founders Joe and Terry Graedon of People’s Pharmacy, longtime Duke associates.)

An audio-only version is at bottom. Here are the videos.

Part 1

Read more

Medical Self-Care: The Doc Tom interview in Mother Earth News

August 12, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, key people, net-friendly docs, pt/doc co-care, trends & principles · 4 Comments

Next in our series of posts about our founder Doc Tom. Previous time capsules: 1980 and 1985.

Come, ye economics buffs and algebra fans; get out your pencils and solve for x, n, and XX:

Whatever else the year 19XX is remembered for, it will — without a doubt — go down in history as a record year for medical expenses here in the United States. All indications are that before the calendar year is out, Americans will have spent $x (n% of the Gross National Product) on drugs, X-rays, surgery, physicians’ fees, laboratory tests, hospital overhead, health insurance, etc. That’s up from the [$0.3x] ([.7n%] of GNP) just 13 years ago.

Clearly, the medical establishment has become a threat to the average American’s budget (if not his health).

Ready? That was… Read more

Next history lesson: Doc Tom (and the Graedons) in the way-back machine

August 10, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, key people, net-friendly docs, pt/doc co-care, trends & principles · 2 Comments

Last Friday we dug up our founder Doc Tom’s Seven Laws of Self-Care, from 1985. At one time Tom served as medical editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Woodstock-era empowerment resource whose subtitle was “Access to Tools.” At left (click to enlarge) is the cover of the original 1968 edition – just as I was getting out of high school.

(Yeah, I know, some of you punks weren’t even born yet. Let’s see if you live this long.)

Well, that same data-spelunking expedition found this, even earlier:

"Doc Tom"in Mother Earth News, 1980

What You Should Know About Drugs – an interview by Tom in Mother Earth News with Joe and Terry Graedon. They had already founded the People’s Pharmacy, which is now of course a very successful website (and radio show and book series and online user forum…).

Twenty-nine years later the Graedons were among the co-founders of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Check out these early signs of defining an engaged, educated patient:
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FERGUSON: What is the most important fact to know about drugs? Read more

Reflections after a specialist visit without OpenNotes

August 8, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, e-pts resources, medical records, policy issues, pt/doc co-care · 21 Comments

Next in our series on my experience with OpenNotes, a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

This item has nothing to do with OpenNotes itself – it’s what I’m seeing now that I’ve started accessing my doctor’s notes. In short, I see the clinical impact of not viewing my record as a shared working document.

Here’s the story. Read more

Must-hear: four Journal of Participatory Medicine contributors discuss how we know what we know

August 7, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc, research issues, understanding statistics · 6 Comments

Last night I got word of an unexpected treat: an hour-long conversation between some real experts about participatory medicine. It’s on Andrew Schorr’s Patient Power site – he and his team are powerhouses as well, and they produced a special hour-long audio program. I encourage you to start playing it like a radio program, as four authorities discuss the nature of evidence and how we know what we (think we) know. Click the headline to go there:

Participatory Evidence: Opportunities & Threats

From the site’s description:
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In medicine, evidence separates modern scientific treatment from Folk Art. Medical evidence is acquired through observation, experimentation, and information sharing in scientific peer-reviewed journals. When new treatments are used, millions of patients around the world provide additional evidence for what works and what doesn’t. Read more

Blowing your mind with Doc Tom’s seven laws of self care

August 5, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, key people, net-friendly docs, pt/doc co-care · 11 Comments

Regular readers know that our founder, “Doc Tom” Ferguson, was an absolute visionary who saw that patients have a much bigger role in their own health than most people realize – at least in our culture. The white paper at top right of this site is the culmination of his life’s thinking.

"Doc Tom" Ferguson - 1985

Through some obsessive Googling, I ran across an early bit of Tom’s writing, an article in Mother Earth News about Medical Self Care, the journal he started. And here are the “seven laws of self care” he saw.

In 1985. Read more

Why Victor Montori joined the Society for Participatory Medicine

August 3, 2010 · Filed Under Why I joined, Why PM, key people, net-friendly docs, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc · 8 Comments

Next in our “Why I Joined” series is Victor Montori, MD of the Mayo Clinic. My wife and I met him in May; he’s high energy, with boundless optimism. And as you’ll see, he feels very strongly about patients being at the center of healthcare.

The civil rights movement has not finished its job. In the list of people who are routinely oppressed today we find patients. I have come to understand that physicians, and I am one, oppress patients not willingly, not deliberately, not intentionally. Oppression of patients is also the result of actions by healthcare administrators, payers, pharma, device manufacturers, and governments, perhaps often unwillingly. At its simplest, oppression (and coercion, and injustice) results from patients staying in the dark about their own health state, their available options and the relative merits of each, the extent to which services can flexibly meet their needs, and the extent to which uncertainty, ignorance, and impotence remain part and parcel of modern medicine. Read more

Essential e-patient topic: understanding the challenges of pathology and diagnosis

August 2, 2010 · Filed Under Why PM, e-pts resources, pt/doc co-care, research issues · 14 Comments

Two posts have brought into wrenching relief one of the more difficult topics I’ve encountered in healthcare: the challenge of understanding diagnosis, especially when difficult pathology is involved.

It started with When a biopsy cannot completely rule out cancer, a post by pathologist Jeffrey Sparks on the KevinMD blog. Separately, Every Patient’s Advocate Trisha Torrey wrote on her personal blog about the visceral reaction she had when Regina Holliday’s paintings reminded her of her own horrifying misdiagnosis. And she joined in the comments at Kevin’s.

First, some definitions, for people who are new to this: Read more

Dear White House: The Personal Data Challenge

July 20, 2010 · Filed Under e-pts resources, medical records, policy issues, positive patterns, pt/doc co-care, reforming hc · 18 Comments

Gary Wolf of Wired has posted a whizbang write-up that came out of a whirlwind one-hour 12-way Skype chat about personal health data. Sound frenetic? It was. (I participated. It was, well, 12-way.)

I can’t imagine how to model what happened, except to say that it was wired.

It grew out of a request from the people at the Community Health Data Initiative, which (as we reported here last month) is opening vast amounts of HHS data for innovators to get at. (And innovators are doing so, fast, as that post describes.) Here’s how Gary started his write-up: Read more

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