Ever since the formation of the Society for Participatory Medicine we have discussed curating and sharing resources about participatory medicine. The resources might be videos, websites, blog posts, tutorials, and other online resources that could benefit patients, caregivers, and clinicians.
For obvious reasons we thought to focus first on patient/caregiver resources. But because of the many online resources available we felt we needed some dedicated leadership to successfully curate this. We had not considered the equally important provider part of the participatory medicine equation, even though I spend a great deal of time teaching physicians and other health care providers about participatory medicine.
Timing is everything. Recently, former SPM executive committee member Ileana Balcu asked if I had a list of participatory medicine resources for physicians for a project she was doing. I assembled a list and suggested she create a webpage of these resources that we could host as part of the SPM website. She agreed and created an important new contribution to the Society’s web offerings.
And it gets better. About six months ago I presented a tutorial on the principles of participatory medicine for physicians. This was part of a larger project about participatory medicine in cancer care that was professionally recorded. I asked the producer for my segment so we could re-purpose it. About the time Ileana was preparing her resource page I received the produced video and we added it to our new page. Unlike recordings of some of my and others’ longer presentations, this was concise (under 15 minutes) and professionally produced. We also added the video it to the SPM’s new YouTube channel, which we will use for many other things to come.
I’m thrilled that Ileana has agreed to continue to take point on editing both this page and the yet-to-be-created patient/caregiver page for the Society. Although it’s a great start, it should be considered to be in “perpetual beta.” It desperately needs additional curation and perhaps better organization. Please share your ideas here or with Ileana directly (yogileana at gmail dot com).
But we need leadership and followership. The Society is a volunteer organization. Nothing gets done unless someone steps up and leads the effort. Ileana has agreed to lead this effort, but she will need help. Please contact her if you’d like to help the cause. And if you want to lead other projects, please let me know or contact one of the other board members.
(We do have a vision for unifying the SPM’s publications, including the Journal of Participatory Medicine, this blog, and other web-based resources into an SPM publishing umbrella, but this requires financial resources and careful planning that is currently underway.)
Check out our new provider resources page here. And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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