by Danny Sands, MD | Jul 16, 2025
We don’t regularly post obituaries on the e-Patients Blog. But sometimes we lose someone of great moment to the SPM and the e-patient community. Nancy Finn was one such person. Nancy Finn was a beacon of inspiration and advocacy. Recently, we faced the profound loss...
by Danny Sands, MD | May 6, 2024
I care for a diverse population of individuals in my primary care practice. It’s hard enough to motivate behavior change in people who have little motivation, but it’s even more challenging when it’s hard to connect with them because of cultural disparities....
by Danny Sands, MD | May 14, 2021
The pressures of healthcare payment has forced physicians to move patients through the office as quickly as possible, and that is robbing us of high-value services that we can provide, particularly to educate and engage in shared decision making with our patients. I...
by Danny Sands, MD | Mar 16, 2021
As you know over the past year we at SPM have been involved in rethinking our organization. How can we make it stronger? More sustainable? More impactful? And more meaningful to our members and corporate partners? As part of this we are restructuring the organization...
by Danny Sands, MD | Dec 17, 2020
Leadership transitions are an essential part of the maturity of any organization. I have been board chair of Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM) for many years and now it is time to pass the torch to Mary Hennings so that I may become our first chief advocacy...
by Danny Sands, MD | Apr 9, 2020
Prologue from Dr. Sands: I trained in clinical informatics because of my belief that we needed to better empower healthcare professionals with information technology so they could take better care of patients, and spent many years creating and implementing these...
by Danny Sands, MD | May 2, 2019
On Tuesday, April 30, a roomful of health care insiders enjoyed a series of rapid-fire, TED-esque talks, interviews, and panels by leading health care voices at The Atlantic Summit on Health Care (#AtlanticPulse). Several SPM members attended the forum, and we...
by Danny Sands, MD | Feb 2, 2016
A fundamental precept of participatory medicine is that health care should not be a spectator sport—it’s best practiced in a participatory manner. This requires engagement from both the patient and the clinician. Yet the typical behavior of health encounters is not...
by Danny Sands, MD | Nov 27, 2013
As we know participatory medicine is based upon mutual respect: the clinician respecting the self-knowledge, experience, and wisdom that the patient brings to the collaboration and the patient respecting the knowledge, clinical experience, wisdom, and technical skills...
by Danny Sands, MD | Sep 11, 2012
This is the blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Since its inception, the Society has been an entirely volunteer organization, the only exception being the Managing Editor of our Journal. While this was generally fine in the early days, we have grown and...
by Danny Sands, MD | Mar 12, 2010
Yesterday I was at a monthly TelePresence meeting of the Person Centered Health initiative, a group that started in Canada that’s closely aligned with the Society for Participatory Medicine. At this meeting, some expressed concern that the memes of...
by Danny Sands, MD | Mar 10, 2010
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...
by Danny Sands, MD | Mar 8, 2010
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...
by Danny Sands, MD | Nov 9, 2009
For most people, their impetus to be actively engaged in healthcare comes from an experience with serious illness—either their own or a loved one’s. My journey into participatory medicine began during my internal medicine residency at Boston City Hospital, a public...
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