How fitting for the Fourth – a year after our Declaration (see below), I just received my renewal notice for the Society for Participatory Medicine.
Here’s a Doctor’s Channel interview, posted a year ago today, in which Society co-chair Alan Greene MD draws an analogy with America’s early presidents:
Here’s the Declaration we posted a year ago, July 4, 2009, on the Society’s site:
A Declaration of Participation
July 4, 2009
Thomas Jefferson had a radical notion: When the people are well-informed, they can be trusted to govern themselves. This powerful idea worked to end our rule by the King, but at the time it didn’t apply to slaves and it didn’t apply to women. It STILL doesn’t apply to patients. And it should.
Organized in 2009, the Society for Participatory Medicine will build on the work started last century by Tom Ferguson MD, creator of the e-Patients Scholars Working Group. “Doc Tom” saw that the internet would give us access to information and access to each other, and with that combination, we the people could be well-informed enough to become potent partners with our health professionals.
Today we declare a new era: the era of Participatory Medicine. Join us.
And here’s the renewal note I got today:
—– Original Message —–
From: The Society for Participatory Medicine
To: e-Patient Dave deBronkart
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2010 6:57 AM
Subject: Renewal reminder
Hello,
A friendly reminder that your membership is due for renewal soon:
The Society for Participatory Medicine http://members.participatorymedicine.org
For: e-Patient Dave deBronkart, Society for Participatory Medicine
Renewal date: 18 Jul 2010
You can renew online by logging in with your email and password.
Thank you.
http://members.participatorymedicine.org
Later this week we’ll announce our 2010 board and a project or two that are just starting.
To join, or volunteer in any way, visit our Join page. We’re participatory – just $30/year for individuals, with scholarships available.
_____________-
More later.
I like some of what Jefferson said and did. But, he was just a man. And what you quote in your Declaration is quite lame and shallow if he indeed said that.
We people can be trusted to govern ourselves.. by whom? We the people are at the top of the rank (sovereign). Who is so audacious to judge us in our ability to rule ourselves or of our “level” of being informed?
Please find a more suitable entry to patient rights, such as the human right to respect and kindness… especially by professions that are above selling and competition due to ethics of special position of responsibility in society.
Hi Dyck – I guess I don’t understand yet what’s bothering you. Jefferson spoke at a time when the ruling class seriously believed that only they were well enough informed to make important decisions. I don’t think it’s lame to have declared a break from that belief.
I also think it’s an apt argument to bring up here, since it’s still common for some physicians to say “Look, who’s got the doctor’s degree here?”
On the other hand, I don’t see our movement as being about “rights” per se… the above was a declaration of participation. For more, see the society’s About page – “The Society aims to advance the understanding of physicians and other professionals in the importance of well-informed, empowered and engaged patients making informed decisions about their care and treatment,” etc.
Dave,
There’s a lot you read into the Jefferson quote that I don’t get from it. Perhaps its my ignorance of history, or in my using history to apply to now. So, maybe I’m not as educated as your typical reader or subscriber.
I am nonetheless a strong supporter of Participative Med.
And I am also sensitive to ‘others’ who seem to know what’s best for the common folk like me and often have position or power to foist it on us. Among these are many doctor-types and elected-types and educated-types, etc…
To me it is very much about my rights… like my right to self determination & freedom, to be left alone, to be the proprietor of my own body, to live my sovereignty, and cumulatively dictate both morals and market instead of a contrived. I abhor the existing manipulated corporate-insurance & pharma driven market and inhumane assembly line medicine and lunacy of HCR.
Okay, I guess it appears our views are pretty similar.