Dr. Pauline Chen poses an interesting question in her NY Times article, Medicine in the Age of Twitter: Does online social media help or hinder patient-provider communication? If you haven't heard about Twitter, it is a new social media platform that allows users to communicate via short, 140 characters or less, "tweets" to other users. I am intrigued about the possibilities of connection, but am wary of the lack of human touch. What do you think?
June 15, 2009
Medicine in the Age of Twitter
Dr. Pauline Chen poses an interesting question in her NY Times article, Medicine in the Age of Twitter: Does online social media help or hinder patient-provider communication? If you haven't heard about Twitter, it is a new social media platform that allows users to communicate via short, 140 characters or less, "tweets" to other users. I am intrigued about the possibilities of connection, but am wary of the lack of human touch. What do you think?
June 4, 2009
Letting the Patient Call the Shots
Today's New York Times has an interesting article written by Dr. Pauline Chen exploring what we, in the healthcare system, really mean by "patient centered care". Does the definition of patient centered care shift if we are in the role of patient or healthcare professional? In the article, Letting the Patient Call the Shots, Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggests that, “ We would all be far better off if we professionals recalibrated our work such that we behaved with patients and families not as hosts in the care system, but as guests in their lives.” Radical changes in our healthcare system will need to occur to allow this to happen, are we ready for such changes? What do you think?
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