#PatientCV Shows Doctors How Proactive Patients Are

The idea of a one-pager skill-set called “Patient CV” created by a chronic patient for her future doctors generated quite a buzz lately on Twitter. Listing of personal health skills could enable patients to show their doctors they are active participants in their care. That means being a patient is not a passive adjective, but a very active verb. How to present complex patient info easily to doctors? The Medical Futurist reached out to the idea initiator, @betabetic or Lindsay Fallow, a software developer turned science journalist; who is coping with multiple endocrine problems including adrenal insufficiency and a type-1 variant diabetes, plus severe asthma and gastric issues. That means she needs to have some of her hydration and nutrition through a central IV. It becomes clear just by reading the listing of all these medical conditions how complex skill-set it must take her to manage them on a daily basis. She said she was walking her dog and contemplating about an upcoming an appointment with a new specialist when the idea popped into her mind. She was thinking about how to present the complex and massive amount of information that she knows about her illnesses. “So I was thinking, this doctor needs to know that this is something I do normally – because physicians have a habit of thinking that their patients are a bit weird when they turn up with ‘professional’ style information. And how crazy is it to imagine that people who have health problems wouldn...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Empowered Patients conversation future Health Health 2.0 Healthcare patient empowerment patient-doctor Source Type: blogs