I don't know when "patient engagement" and "patient-centeredness" made their ways into the language -- any more than I know when patients (also known as people on the receiving end of medical care) began to disengage in the first place. Nevertheless, both terms are widely in use and I'd like to peer into what we mean by 'em. Two things I'm willing to bet before I start: (1) we still have a lot to learn about putting patient engagement to work, and (2) we stand to learn a lot from unexpected and off-the-radar sources.
Why engage patients in health care? No doubt there are a zillion+ different answers.
To get things rolling, I want to put it out there that the mainstream views on the subject are essentially medical-scientific ones, and that the loudest answers seem to be stemming from healthcare professionals. (some of whom attended FasterCures' Partnering For Cures conference last week in New York, where patient engagement was a red hot topic) For the record, I have no problem seeing where the researchers, clinicians, hospital-and-nonprofit-types who have adopted this perspective -- and who speak it fluently -- are coming from.
But I also see patient engagement from at least two other perspectives:
In the series of posts I'm envisioning, I hope to relate these to the more mainstream medical perspective and mine them for all they're worth. Could they teach us to do patient engagement better? Could exploring them help move the conversation forward for the benefit of all? I have a healthy hunch the answers are "yes" and "yes."
- a management perspective that sees patients as resources who may or may not (via their employment) add organizational value;
- a still-to-be-named perspective that wants nothing to do with reducing patients to resources, but sees needs for patient participation on far, far bigger scales; scratch that -- on steroids.
According to FasterCures, "One in three Americans lives with a deadly or debilitating disease for which there is no cure and few meaningful treatment options exist." Think about that...
Can we afford not to consider all things from all sides?
