Patient Empowered Communication

ENG 6811 Medical Contexts of Texts and Technology

Fall 2010

Photo by Chalmers Butterfield

What can you do when doctors don’t listen?

Or when they patronize you?

Or when they don’t give you enough time to express your concerns?

What can YOU do when you feel powerless about health care decisions?

The patient empowerment movement seeks to make medical care

• Safe

• Effective

• and Responsive to patients’ needs

(Hallisy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuGh78X2IQw

History

• Focus on complex science added to social distancing

• Formulaic interview forms replace narrative histories

• Uneven power balance between doctor and patient

• Roots in the 1960’s rights movements

Initial focus: issues like breast cancer and AIDS—focus has expanded over time

Changing attitudes—changing healthcare landscape

Managed care

Fewer GPs, more patients

Better educated patients

Addressing safety concerns

“1.5 million Americans are sickened, injured, or killed each year by medication errors”

“44,000-98,000” annual medical error deaths

Printed texts aimed at patients include:• books • newspaper columns• magazine and newspaper articles • brochures

Online sources include:• professional sites • community advocates• non-profit sites• media and other commercial sites

From the Clinician’s Point of View

Game Time!

Ideas and Discussion Threads:1. Roter brings up the idea of “medicalisation,” the

tendency of modernity to pathologize even normal life events like aging. Do you think that patient empowerment offers a way out, or is the movement merely a further sign of medicalisation?

2. Kim brings up the iPad as a patient-empowerment device. What low-cost, low-tech tools could serve similar purposes for those who don’t have access to modern technologies?

3. What are the downsides, if any, to patient-empowerment?

4. The gas companies taught us to pump our own gas. Do you think insurance companies will take advantage of patient-empowerment initiatives to shift healthcare to the patient? Would that be a bad thing?