Education: a Key Tool for Engagement

Peter Elias When I began my medical training almost a half century ago, medical culture, and the educational system that maintained it, were based on the concept that the physician was the expert who knows best, and that a “good” patient was a compliant patient. Perhaps because I was raised to think for myself, I was unhappy in the role of shepherd for a flock of obedient “sheeple.” By the end of my first decade in practice, I had come to see my job as educating patients about their conditions and options, helping them make the decisions they needed to make, and helping them achieve their health goals. Because this worked so well for me and my patients, I have been constantly surprised (and often appalled) by the persistence of clinician, institution and now, guideline-centered care, where patients are a raw material rather than a driver. I will never forget the college student who had been told by his previous primary care physician to give up running as a sport, who became the standout captain of his college cross country team after he and I decided to pursue his goals rather than adjust his lifestyle to make his disease easy to manage. In my role as teacher and preceptor for our local family practice residency, I saw firsthand how little medical students and residents had been exposed to the concept of patient-driven and clinician-supported care, and how readily they adopted it when given the chance. Shared work and responsibility not only works better, but is less...
Source: Society for Participatory Medicine - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Newsletter e-patient movement empowered patient medical traning member-to-member education participatory medicine patient-centered student clinicians Source Type: news