e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Recently in JoPM: Jessie Gruman tribute, book review on asthma
We don't tell you often enough here of new pieces in JoPM, our Journal of Participatory Medicine. Of course you can subscribe to the journal on their site, but I hope to specifically point things out here. (See also our past posts in the JoPM category.) Here are two...
Communicating the experience of illness in the digital age
At 9am on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014, Stanford Medicine X will host a discussion led by Pamela Ressler, Colleen Young, Meredith Gould and me about the power and pitfalls of people sharing their health experiences online. We are "flipping" the panel by sharing resources and...
Susannah Fox is leaving Pew Research
I know many of our readers already saw this, but, from her personal blog: In one way, I'm sad to see that her work at Pew is over. In her 14 years there, time after time her work made clear what was actually happening as people use the internet in pursuing health....
Guest post by Zack Berger, MD, PhD: The pledge of the patient-centered physician
This blog welcomes guest posts from SPM members on relevant topics. Zack Berger of Johns Hopkins (@ZackBergerMDPhD) is highly committed to participatory medicine, and as this post shows, his book Talking To Your Doctor gets right down into the how-to's. (More on this...
Jessie Christine Gruman, 1953-2014
I'm saddened (really saddened, as I write this) to report that one of the titans of our movement, Jessie Gruman, died unexpectedly yesterday at home in New York. She had long been sick, but the demise was sudden. In addition to the mountain of work she produced as...
Keeping Patients in the Dark: SIIPC14
Several SPM members were in attendance at the recent SIIPC14 conference at Dartmouth, where the ongoing work on healthcare system transformation  has been the source of much great content on e-patients.net over the years. Casey Quinlan - yes, yours truly - has...
The Doctor as Patient
Charlotte Yeh is the Chief Medical Officer of AARP Services, and has had a long career in government and as a practicing emergency physician. (Our paths first crossed years ago when we were both working on pre-hospital care reform in Massachusetts.) She wrote a piece...
Of half gods and mortals: Aesculapian authority
Written in collaboration with Linda Trietler, MSN, RN - PhD student. Review of Kalisch, B. J. (1975). Of half-gods and mortals: Aesculapian authority. Nursing Outlook, 23(1), 22-28. As we work to develop a collaborative and patient centered health care system we must...
A Farewell to Richard Rockefeller, e-Health Visionary
The founders of SPM were saddened this weekend to learn of the death, in a private plane crash, of Richard Rockefeller, longtime friend of "Doc Tom" Ferguson. Rockefeller was credited in Ferguson's white paper as "a White Paper Advisor." - e-Patient Dave ________ When...
From BMJ: The BMJ’s own patient journey – Seeks to promote patient partnership by walking the talk
An interesting editorial in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) describes BMJ's path to including patients in reviewing the articles and research published in the Journal. I hope this initiative will be successful and copied by the healthcare world....
Wall Street Journal on patient access: “Health-Care Providers Want Patients to Read Medical Records, Spot Errors”
Regular readers know that this blog has long advocated for patient access to, and engagement with, the medical record. In the past 2-3 years we've especially advocated for OpenNotes, in which patients can see their primary's actual visit notes.  At my hospital, Beth...
HIMSS blog: Thought Leadership – The Patient Perspective
Interesting blog at HIMSS by Pete Rivera: use the patient to redesign the workflow: Thought Leadership - the Patient Perspective For years, I advocated that health IT does not drive business. I still do. Rethinking your processes to leverage technology is just smart...