We’ve written often here about the BMJ’s leadership on not just listening to patients but looking at healthcare from the patient’s perspective. Their patient partnership campaign, launched in 2014, includes a patient advisory panel that works actively to consult with the editors on several projects, and ongoing discussions lead occasionally to editorials (such as last month’s on the tricky issues of industry support for patient organizations) and blog posts.

A new post has just gone live, and will be accompanied by a #BMJdebate tweetchat next Thursday, April 13, at 5 pm GMT, noon ET, 9 am PT.  The subject is a hot one for many patients and patient voices: Words that annoy. Phrases that grate.

Importantly, not everyone quoted in the post agrees with each other – I certainly don’t have problems with some of the phrases that others hate. But that’s the point – it’s another sign of the paradigm change that’s slowly unrolling as healthcare tries to figure out how to re-imagine patients as people who are actually involved in the case, not the subject of the case or the object of therapies. Because, as patients themselves start to call the shots, guess what: we don’t all agree!

So, game on.  The post asks for additional submissions in comments there. Please do!  And let them know you heard about it on the e-patient blog, because we want to increase our global visibility.

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Edit: here’s a direct link to the whole patient perspectives category on the BMJ blog site.