Might patients hold the key to putting the brake on spiralling healthcare costs? If you had asked me that question a few days ago I’d have said no. We all know about the problem of spiralling demand for healthcare and rising patients’ expectations. But after participating in the Salzburg Global Seminar, where the thesis that” […]
Bruce Wade: Improving the quality of health communications
My longstanding interests in US health disparities, doctor patient interactions, and prostate cancer mortality made the 477th Salzburg Global Seminar of profound interest to me. It had a great impact on my thinking as a sociologist. The seminar enlightened me about problems with the quality of health communications and processes of decision making that may result […]
Layla McCay: Down with paternalism; long live shared decision making
Paternalism is so last century. In this new era of patient centered care, the modern health professional knows the importance of involving patients in decisions about their care, particularly when there is more than one appropriate option, and the decision hinges on personal preferences and values. […]
“e-Patient Dave” deBronkart: Back to the future: Tom Ferguson’s “e patients” emerge in shared decision-making
I’m an e-patient: empowered, engaged, equipped, enabled. Diagnosed in 2007 with late stage kidney cancer, I used the internet in every way possible to help my cause, in concert with world class physicians at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Today I am well. A year after my diagnosis I discovered e-patients.net, a blog started […]
Biao Xu: Shared decision making in China
Involving and informing patients in decisions about their medical care is a very important issue since patients are one of the untapped resources in healthcare. But in low and middle income countries like China, where universal coverage of healthcare services has not been reached, a big concern is whether patients with equal needs can get equal access […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 23 December 2010
JAMA 15 Dec 2010 Vol 304 2595 New England is a wonderful place: from its little towns a nation was born, full of the idiosyncracies of seventeenth century Britain. The cadences of the 1611 Bible can still be heard in the speeches of President Obama, and even on hoardings advertising health products; miles, pints, and […]
John Coggon: Organ donation and public ethics
Public healthcare is by definition everyone’s business. Yet there is considerable disagreement about who should take part in its development. This problem is most pronounced when the issue is one of widespread social concern, and one on which there is a great range of views: scientific, clinical, political, moral. […]
Liz Wager: Can we immunise Brazilian science against fraud?
I’m in Sao Jose dos Campos, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, on the last leg of BRISPE 1 – the First Brazilian meeting on Research Integrity, Science & Publication Ethics, which started in Rio de Janeiro last week. Brazilian science is, apparently, booming. A recent article in Science described it as “riding a gusher.” An astrophysicist […]
Julian Sheather: On spouses and the right to self-determination
I recently attended a seminar concerned with human rights violations of women forced or coerced into sterilisation, a joint undertaking by the Open Society Institute and the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations. For a week I was a guest in a handsome villa in snow-softened Salzburg with health professionals and human rights […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 20 December 2010
JAMA 8 Dec 2010 Vol 304 2494 When cardiac troponin measurements came into use about a decade ago, it was immediately clear that they would change clinical practice and redefine ischaemic heart disease. By providing a simple biochemical indication of the degree of myocardial injury and death, they also provided us with a new marker […]