On Wednesday, e-pateints.net posted a guest blog by Cynthia Lott Vogel titled, “I’m getting impatient”: an empowered patient guest post, that discussed her personal experience as a patient diagnosed with a number of health ailments, and her physicians’ care of those ailments.
Cynthia had a number of concerns regarding the humanistic characteristics of her care. Exhausted from a lack of progress, her physicians’ abundant prescriptions and suggestions to limit almost all physical activity, she tried alternative, holistic forms of care that seemed to make a difference in her ability to perform a number of everyday tasks, and even provide her the opportunity for physical leisure.
In the media, there is discussion around the role of an “empowered patient.” Cynthia suggests her own addition to the definition of being empowered as,
“Knowing, through education, experience and self-knowledge, what advice one should follow and what ‘wisdom’ one should disregard and then doing what you believe to be true—but being willing to be corrected should experience prove otherwise.”
Although Cynthia’s experience was rather unique, her post relates to a recent poll we conducted on HL7 Standards that asked our readers how often they receive educational content from their physicians, primary care or specialist, in order to help them make the best decisions regarding the daily care of their health. Below was the delineation of responses:
Question: How often do you receive preventative advice and/or educational content from your physicians?
- Regularly receive. – 10%
- Sporadically receive. – 30%
- Infrequently receive. – 20%
- Never receive. – 40%
What role does a physician play in providing educational content beyond the relevant care to his or her patients? Are physicians expected to regularly contact patients with information? Or, given the advent of the internet, is it a patient’s responsibility to seek information regarding health care for conditions not addressed during a visit?
What do you think? As a physician and/or patient, what is your view on health care responsibilities?
If there is a poll topic you think would be appropriate or interesting, please send it to info@HL7Standards.com.
Related posts:
- Do you get an annual physical exam by your physician? Poll Results
- Use the Mint Model to Empower Patients
- This Time It’s Personal…
- Recent Poll Results: Are you electronically exchanging Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) today?
- Who do you believe is the real winner with Meaningful Use? Poll Results
