There is a campaign underway to help consumers understand the risks and benefits of selected procedures commonly used in care. The Choosing Wisely campaign is a collaboration of more than 70 professional organizations whose intent is to bring best evidence into the public spotlight in order to help consumers take a more active role in decisions that affect their health and safety. By focusing on the patient-clinician relationship, the goals of this national initiative are as follows. “Choosing Wisely aims to promote conversations between clinicians and patients by helping patients … [Read more...]
Decisions!
Webster defines decision as “a choice that you make about something after thinking about it: the result of deciding.” In healthcare, we should be so lucky to have clear language around terms that are driving clinical care today! Patient engagement and shared decision-making are two terms that are used repeatedly but rarely with a description of what the terms mean or the related expectations for improving outcomes. But we are allocating time and resources to initiatives with these labels and expecting care delivery to be transformed. Decisions in Care Sometimes decisions are fun. … [Read more...]
21st Century Partnerships
Clinical Linkages’ blog, 21st Century Patients, is resurfacing after a yearlong hiatus. The new format will emphasize the critical importance of supporting the clinician-patient partnership today. Healthcare is in the midst of dramatic changes that are placing considerable pressure on the clinician-patient partnership. Without effective partnering between patients and clinicians, healthcare becomes an impersonal space despite sophisticated technology, medications, and a retail approach of customer service. Patients, families, and clinicians alike recognize that this undercurrent is … [Read more...]
Ebola: America Driven by Fear
Ebola is a nasty disease. But ignorance is worse. If you doubt this statement, take look at film clips from BBC World on the struggle to bring calm, through the use of the evidence, to the many frightened people in West Africa. Why, in America, where we have access to a 24/7 news cycle, has fear taken control of our brains? A recent Wall Street Journal article is a case in point. The article is about the nurse who volunteered to care for people with Ebola in Sierra Leone. It is a disheartening look at what misinformation does to people. It drives politicians to mandate rules so their … [Read more...]
Listen! Say Our Patients
Patient engagement is the new mantra. Several posts on 21st Century Patients blog have addressed this phrase and the confusion surrounding the term. Likewise, there are can be no defined outcomes for “engagement”. Although a meaningless phrase it is here to stay – subject to various interpretations and possibly used as a weapon for someone’s benefit. I suggest we step back a moment and really look at our clinical care areas for the presence of “engagement”. What do you see? Where are the eyes and ears? Perhaps you can identify with the scene in the Emergency Department of this story in … [Read more...]
If Nurses Could Take Over the World…
What do you think would happen to patient care if nurses took over the world? I suggest this question should be the headline for Nurses Week because, as a nation, we are missing the point about improving healthcare. Words like patient engagement are tossed around freely without an understanding of what it really means to “engage” a patient. Well, nurses do know what it means and there are three million RNs in the US who can lay claim to a long history of significant contributions to improving health because nurses have always engaged patients. This is Nurses Week and it offers an … [Read more...]
Engaging Patients: Back to the Future
One thing is clear in the chorus of words about patient care today, there is no consensus on a definition for patient engagement. I suggest we are missing something very important because we have a historical precedent for patient involvement in their care that led to positive change. In fact it was patients who became a very powerful force for change because they read, they attended classes and they understood they should be partners in the way they received care. They were engaged. In the 1970s, childbirth education surfaced to help women learn about the normal processes of labor and … [Read more...]