Tag Archives: patient-centred care

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Mitchell Elliott is a medical student in the Class of 2019 at the University of Toronto

 

Doctors are amongst the intellectual elite of society. In many cases, with decades of training and continuing education in clinical practice, our expertise grants us the opportunity to do things that would be deemed invasive and inhumane if performed outside of the context of medicine. Selectively poisoning people with chemotherapy; carefully dissecting fascial planes and removing organs; asking invasive and personal questions... all in the name of symptom management, remission of disease, and prolonging the inevitable: death. For physicians, these daily rituals become almost routine. In many cases, we have spent the majority of our lives training for the uncertainty of each day, rigorously memorizing each disease presentation and management principle, habituating to these processes and procedures. With the heavy clinical demands on physicians, it may be difficult to fully realize the impact of our actions on each patient. ...continue reading →

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Austin Lam is a medical student at the University of Toronto

 

 

We often hear and use the term “patient-centred care” without having a precise definition in mind. In order to elucidate the meaning of this term, it is important to analyze the concept lying at its centre: the patient. What does it mean to be a patient? What is the core, essential definition of patient?

Some have argued for patient to be replaced with a different term. As someone who has undergone surgeries myself, I have reflected on the meaning of this word and its associated implications. My hope is that this preliminary analysis can help provide directions for future questions, emphasizing an open exploration rather than closing off areas of discussion. ...continue reading →

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Charlie Tan is a medical student at McMaster University

Lawrence Loh is Associate Medical Officer of Health at Peel Public Health

 

Too often, physicians forget that they might be just one of many sources of health advice that patients access. Behind every physician-patient encounter is a difference in how health and wellness are perceived and pursued. For many physicians, their views and advice are shaped by formal education and training, the Hippocratic Oath, and the insights of colleagues, researchers, and experts. Their patients, by contrast, have a different and often wider range of influences, be it personal beliefs, social networks, or cultural traditions.

Over the last three decades, physician practice has been transformed by two important movements ...continue reading →

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Arlene Bierman is the Director of Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement (CEPI) at the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

Rick Glazier is a Family Physician and Senior Scientist and Program Lead of Primary Care and Population Health at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto, Canada

 

Primary care is foundational to optimizing individual and population health. Health systems based upon primary care provide better access to care while improving health equity and outcomes and reducing costs. Effective models of primary care can greatly enhance the value of increasingly constrained health care spending. Despite large investments on primary care transformation in the US and Canada, primary care has yet to achieve its full promise in either country. Sharing successes and failures from attempts at innovation on both sides of the border can help each country accelerate improvement.

Despite very different health systems, primary care practices in both countries encounter remarkably similar challenges in delivering care. At the point of care, patients’ needs are similar and their experiences too often suboptimal. ...continue reading →

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Robyn Tamblyn is the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Health Services and Policy Research, and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and  Epidemiology & Biostatistics in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, Canada

Andrew Bazemore is a practicing physician and the Director of the Robert Graham Center – Policy Studies in Family Medicine & Primary Care -  in Washington, DC

 

Yehuda Berg, an American author and spiritual leader, was probably talking about individual level transformation when he said “We need to realize that our path to transformation is through our mistakes. We're meant to make mistakes, recognize them, and move on to become unlimited.” But the statement has a lot of validity even applied to system level transformation.

Canada and the United States share the dubious honor of ranking near the top of OECD nations for total healthcare costs and near the bottom for health outcomes, whether measured in terms of individual health or health system performance. But it is through the recognition of these mistakes that both countries have embarked on a path toward transformation.

While differences between the two systems of health care delivery are frequently emphasized, we actually face some common challenges to primary care transformation ...continue reading →