Participatory Healthcare at Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds is a "must visit" place today irrespective of whether you're a consumer, healthcare provider, or have another dog in the fight to improve healthcare. You'll find clear explanations of what "participatory healthcare" is and have a chance to assess how it's emerging.

One thing about participatory healthcare that jumps out at me is how well it aligns with the way I was taught to approach patient care when I was an undergrad nursing student in the mid '80's. That curriculum also came with a hefty dose of "change management" theory, something that drew disdain from the "where's the beef?" crowd and, unfortunately, didn't change much.

But what does seem to be changing things is the information revolution. Patient access to information, ideas, outcomes, and communication modalities is doing more than just shoring up foundational changes in "how we do things around here," (the easiest way to describe healthcare culture). These changes must occur to make the delivery of healthcare more reliable, more safe.

I see patient engagement as transformational, meaning we're likely to get somewhere better as a result of letting patients take the lead for part of the journey. So take a trip to Survive the Journey and see how far we've come.

When you do, you'll find that a number of the people who contributed to the participatory healthcare Grand Rounds appear on the inaugural list of "Top 25 Patient Safety Tweeps" I published last month, among them Dave DeBronkart (epatientDave), Amy Romano (midwifeamy), and John Sharp (JohnSharp). The experience of patients is central to efforts to improve patient safety. So are initiatives and incentives arising from clinicians, organizations, payors, industry partners, regulators, and academics. I'll publish an updated list this Friday, 10/16/09.

I welcome nominations of individuals or organizations from any of these categories for consideration on Safety Nurse's Top 25 Tweeps for Patient Safety list. The entity must have a current, active presence on Twitter. The volume of tweets is less important than the quality of patient safety information that's passed along.

Thanks for participating!