patient voice

Mounting concern that health professional/patient interactions are often less than therapeutic has led to many initiatives aimed at finding ways to put the care back into the health care system. In Canada, one such initiative is the creation of the Patient Experience department of Alberta Health Services. Find the full article here.

CTV -- "... In the medical world, a patient’s ability to understand medical language is called “health literacy” and most of us are pretty low in it. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly nine out of 10 adults have difficulty handling medical information, advice and health product labels."

A draft of a new guidance document titled, Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media by Physicians, has been approved for external consultation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons’ governing Council. This guidance document provides advice to physicians on how existing professional and legal expectations apply to their use of social media.

The Patients’ Association was invited to participate in the Oct 20-22, 2012 Hacking Health event at the MaRS DD centre.  Based on the “hackathon” model, the event brought together those with ideas for healthcare applications with programmers, designers, medical professionals and many others, to develop working models -- in two days! Our role was to provide patient insights to the teams as mentors and to participate in the judging of the applications.

Many teams had yet to consider how to include patients in the design process; some had yet to even consider including patients. The Patients' Association wants to help solve this problem.

ANDRE PICARD - It is essential that the health care system be transformed to put the needs of patients and their families ahead of those of providers, the new president of the Canadian Medical Association says.

In this article, PAC president Sholom Glouberman argues for greater patient representation and, “If you’re going to improve the patient experience, you have to look at things from the patient’s point of view."