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Guest Post Guidelines

This page is obsolete. For blog posts, see the https://participatorymedicine.org/epatients/GuestPosts page. Articles for our Journal of Participatory Medicine: see guidelines here.      

February retrospective on e-patients.net

Researching recently I wound up looking at where we were two years ago – February 2009, just as the Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM) was forming. Fascinating to see what topics were live then and are still relevant today – this community has...

The kind of thinking to look for

There are several stages in becoming an empowered, engaged, activated patient – a capable, responsible partner in getting good care for yourself, your family, whoever you’re caring for. One ingredient is to know what to expect, so you can tell when things...

The Complete Guide to Self Tracking

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, sponsor of the e-Patients White Paper that was the genesis of this blog and the Society for Participatory Medicine, is sponsoring a partnership of the Institute for the Future and The Quantified Self to build a The Complete Guide to...

“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...

“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,...

Avoiding harm in the hospital

I spoke recently at a summit organized by Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project, and learned in detail about the persistence and prevalence of hospital-acquired infections and other safety risks. Hospitals are not as safe as they should and could be, and...

On Veterans Day: Inspiration

Necessity is the mother of invention.  I have been profoundly moved over the past few months by a handful of people who have been forced to live this idiom or who have stepped up to the challenge of aiding wounded warriors. In honor of Veterans Day,  please take a...

Day 1 of TEDMED: Charity Tillemann-Dick, e-patient

Update Jan. 18: the video has just been released – see it at the bottom of this post. TEDMED is a truly extraordinary conference in San Diego, a fall sibling of TED talks focused on medicine. TED talks are just 18 minutes long, chosen and designed to blow your...

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