e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Doctors often use treatments with little scientific support
According to Reuters, physicians often base treatments on expert opinion or anecdotal evidence. Only one in seven treatment recommendations from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) -- a society representing healthcare providers and researchers across the...
Journal of Participatory Medicine: Top Ten Articles
From the editors of our society's journal, the Journal of Participatory Medicine: As we close out Volume 2 of JoPM, we're pleased to look back at how the journal has grown. We published a total of 23 articles in 2010. We published our first two podcasts. In...
Wikipedia’s entry on “e-patient”
Thanks to a tweet by @AndrewSpong during this morning's #hcsmeu Twitter chat, I was reminded that Wikipedia has an "e-patient" entry.
SPM Public Policy Committee Joins the Patient Engagement Dialogue with the Federales
In December the Society for Participatory Medicine's executive committee appointed health law attorney David Harlow to represent the Society in public policy matters. Regular readers of HealthBlawg::David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog know what a patient-centered,...
New at the Journal for Participatory Medicine
From Kathleen O'Malley, managing editor of The Journal of Participatory Medicine: We've got some good intellectual exchanges going on at The Journal of Participatory Medicine. The three latest Commentaries we posted have garnered several worthwhile comments attached...
Six US health systems to share data
For those who believe in the power of facts, some wonderful news from CMIO, 12/15/10: "Six of the nation's leading healthcare systems — Cleveland Clinic, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Denver Health, Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare and Mayo Clinic — will join...
“The Difficult Science”: series by Kent Bottles
Kent Bottles MD is one of the best healthcare thinkers I've met. Yesterday he completed a two-part tour de force on The Health Care blog titled "The Difficult Science." Here are part 1 and part 2. This is about "how do we know what we think we know - and what the heck...
“They never took his sock off”: a parable of patient empowerment, resourcefulness, and literacy
Jessie Gruman's Journal of Participatory Medicine commentary, "Evidence That Engagement Does Make a Difference," reminded me of a talk delivered by Alice Tolbert Coombs, M.D., last September: As you listen to Dr. Coombs's chilling story about a man who lost his foot...
“A lot of shackling lives in language”
What do we (patients) call ourselves? This is a deep subject that's been debated a lot. (If I were Susannah Fox I'd toss in a dozen worthy links here:), but I'm short on time. Please add some in comments.) There is indeed power in the words we use, because the people...
“Unwarranted practice variation”: an essential e-patient awareness topic
Headline and body edited Oct 6, 2013: the original post talked about "practice variation," but that was bad wording. The problem is unwarranted practice variation: variation that, when studied, is not warranted by actual differences between cases. ___________ This is...
“The Spoon Theory”: brilliant description of chronic illness
If you don't truly understand how draining it can be to live with chronic illness, including chronic pain, go read The Spoon Theory right now. In 5 minutes it forever changed my own awareness of my wife's arthritis and bone pain. On Twitter I saw "spoonies" raving...
Cancer 2.0
Given the evidence that people are ready, willing, and able to engage in online discussions about cancer prevention and treatment, what steps are being taken to ensure that the U.S. (and the world) does not miss this latest opportunity for education and discovery? The...
