e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
When no other feedback channels exist, the Patient Advocate becomes a single point of failure
This blog welcomes guest posts from SPM members on relevant topics. One of our Society's newest members, Susan Cournoyer, is a tech industry analyst, and is familiar with the concept of systems that are well designed or weakly designed, e.g. with a "single point of...
50 million more patients to get OpenNotes! Huge win for empowered partnership!
Big news: a multi-foundation $10 million grant will spread OpenNotes access to fifty million more patients! Nearly 20% of America will have full access to their providers' visit notes, so they can review them from anywhere! Regular readers know we've always been loud...
KevinMD picks up SPM’s “The truth about that mug” post. Engage.
Funny how a complex cultural discussion can get triggered by something as simple as a coffee mug. In our work to change healthcare's beliefs about the patient-clinician relationship, nothing has had greater impact in less time than our post two weeks ago The truth...
“Patients organise and train doctors to provide better care”: patients writing in the BMJ
As SPM advances the cause of patients as responsible drivers of their care, we sometimes hear denials or complaints from physicians who feel that e-patients needy, uninformed, self-centered burdens on busy clinicians' time. Well, here's a juicy counter-example - in...
NPR Shots: Small Violations Of Medical Privacy Can Hurt Patients And Corrode Trust
One pillar of participatory medicine, as SPM co-chair Dr. Danny Sands often says, is access to our medical records: "How can patients participate if they can't see what I see??" But a major impediment to free-flowing information is incompetence or malfeasance in...
Why the Google mug leaves such a bitter taste
Guest post by SPM member Katherine Kelly Leon @KatherineKLeon of the famous "SCAD sisters," spotlighted in this 2011 post. This is about the "Your Googling" mug many of us discussed last week. Coffee mugs are like totems, spiritual items that empower us. Many of us...
“Where can I get that mug???”
You can't make this stuff up. One of our most-commented posts ever was Monday's The truth about that “your Googling and my medical degree” mug, about the coffee mug that went viral on Facebook this week. Well, some docs saw it and emailed, asking where to...
New in our journal: Evaluation of a Lay Health Educator Model with Low-Income Latinas
Our society's open-access Journal of Participatory Medicine has not gotten enough play, so to speak, on this blog. Let's try posting something about each article as it emerges. Email subscribers will receive them like any other post; online these posts will appear in...
Forbes article featuring Carol Gunn: One Doctor’s Quest To End The Plague Of Screwed-Up Medical Diagnoses
Carol Gunn, an SPM physician member, was featured in a Forbes article about her sister's misdiagnosis, and her mission after her sister's death. Carol's tips for patients to avoid being victims of diagnostic mistakes: Tip #1: Get a second opinion that’s completely...
Read & share! Washington Post *nails it* about patient-clinician partnership
Today's Washington Post has a terrific, carefully researched, precise article - on the front page of the Health & Science section - about the reality of a good patient-clinician partnership: Does your doctor listen when you talk? by Suzanne Allard Levingston. (As...
The truth about that “your Googling and my medical degree” mug
I can't tell you how many people have flung this Facebook item at me since last night, starting with my wife. :-) It's already approaching 25,000 shares. (Update: at 11am ET on Dec 1 it's up to 73,000 shares in 48 hours. I'd say it's going viral...) Listen, people:...
Dr. Danny Sands explains what participatory medicine is and isn’t (great 5 minute video)
Dr. Danny Sands is one of the co-founders of our Society for Participatory Medicine, a great primary care physician, and a real thought leader who's been doing this modern stuff for twenty years. (He co-authored the first journal paper on how to do patient-clinician...