From a Patient’s Point of View
This is a blog post dedicated to sharing patient and family experiences when interacting with healthcare. Always helpful when people learn of the experiences of others.
The Challenge
Sharing your experiences is powerful
What input do you have that you believe could have improved your experience? What tips for improvement do you have to share? The truth is, sharing is very important, however, solution-creating is far more productive.
Patient-Centered Care
What does this term mean to you, as a patient? as a family? In the healthcare industry, this very sentence is so tired and overused. Here is my favorite line “but, they left a paragraph out”. What is left out of this picture? Yes, the actual patient. The broad term, “patient” leaves out the most important aspect, what the patient actually experienced. It’s the difference between, watching a video about skydiving, and actually experiencing skydiving yourself. There is nothing that replaces that “experience”.
The Preverbal Intersection Where healthcare “business” meets the patient
Of all the challenges in healthcare, one that stands out is this picture. Healthcare is a business, patients are not. The intersection where the two meet is not pretty. Two driving forces trying to mix in a solution. The only problem, one is in a dominant position, the other in a very vulnerable position. Here is an analogy. Mix sugar with water, the sugar dissolves, and the solution is mixed. On the other hand, take sliced carrots, and place them in a glass of water, they do not mix. The carrots just float around in the water. This is healthcare in a nutshell. The solution is the healthcare industry, the carrots are the patients-just floating around with no particular direction.
Where To Go from Here? What Can I do?
People learn in all kinds of manners. Learning by experience is very powerful. Focusing on experience rather than opinion. How to separate the two, it’s no easy task. If one relates a truthful story concerning an experience, it has an enormous impact. If relating just an opinion, it seems you get all the emotional baggage but no real solution, or impact. Common today is to share opinions. While this may seem helpful, it separates from sharing experiences in one very important way. Sharing an experience is personal. This is why storytelling resonates. This is why we read books, watch movies, and the list goes on. Since recorded history, humans have been telling their stories.
The Bottom Section What to Do Now
We invite you to share your experiences your feelings, and your emotions as it relates to being a patient or family member of a patient.
This blog post is dedicated to capturing what patients/families are saying about their experiences when interacting with healthcare. This is a list to get you started
• What was the emotional response to the experience?
• What were the challenges you and your family faced?
• Did you feel prepared or was it unexpected?
• Did you know departments in hospitals are commonly called “Service Lines”?
• What was your experience with obtaining your records?
• Questions: What questions did you have that were answered, which ones were not.
The Patient University, “Open-sourced” Healthcare©.
Driving the train to a better, safer healthcare system!
USEFUL WEBSITE LINKS
Patient Safety and Quality Improvement | Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (ahrq.gov)
Patient Education | The Patient University Here is a link to our page with a list of very useful websites
