Patient Destiny

Step Four

Step 4: Take stock of your health status - search for information on your disease.

What is your healthcare status today - right now? This requires that you be totally honest with yourself and evaluate your overall health situation. It can be that you are doing very well or it could be that things are actually not looking so good. This is not as important as being totally honest with yourself.  I believe that the worst sin we commit on ourselves is when we lie to ourselves.  We position things as not so bad or it's okay, when really we know deep down that changes are needed.

Step Three

Step 3 is to search for providers.

The path to empowerment requires work and commitment. Once you believe that patient empowerment is critical and requires a change in mindset and responsibility (Step One) and you have found a mentor that has your condition or illness (Step Two), the next step is to convince your physician that you want to be empowered and that you can be trusted - that's right - TRUSTED with managing your care!

Most of the physicians that I have met, and worked with, truly believe in the patient voice and have focused their careers on providing endless support for their patients. This is not true of all doctors, but is true of the majority. This means that finding a doctor to support your own personal healthcare empowerment should NOT be too difficult.

What is difficult, however, is doing the work to convince your doctors that you are serious about your care and that you are motivated to manage it effectively. I know that this sounds trite, but not everyone does what is best for them...if you do not believe me, then just look at all the smokers out there!

Step Two

Step 2: Search for like patients.

The second step is to find someone very specifically who has a like illness or condition that you can begin to work with. This person may be found through your doctor or through a hospital or clinic information session or just from hanging around the waiting room. I know for me, it is not hard to find other patients who have Crohn's disease. I sometimes just run into them at the pharmacy when they are ordering their prescriptions or medications.

Now not every patient that you will come in contact with will be experienced in patient empowerment, or even espouse it for that matter, but at least this is a beginning of the very important social networking function...you have to reach out and find support from real-life patients.

Step one

As stated, over the next fortnight or so, I will expand on each one of the ten steps outlined in yesterday's post.

Step one is to learn from other's experience!

What this means is that we must be able to accept that the empowerment that other patients have achieved to date is a good thing - both for them and for the healthcare system. You need to accept this because if you do not, then you will never achieve anything close to your own state of empowerment.

Why?  Because it is too hard to achieve and the journey is too long and fraught with all sorts of obstacles. If you are not fully committed, then I guarantee you will terminate the effort long before you get there.

The 10 Steps to Patient Empowerment

In previous posts, I have outlined a number of tasks that patients can take in order to beome more empowered. One problem with this is that empowerment is comprised of so many factors and the potential to do so much more, that it is very difficult to define, at least in general terms, what we are referring to when we state that one has achieved a level of empowerment. However, suffice it to say, that patients need to be more active in their care, more involved in their decisions and need to feel that they are partners with their overall care-giving team.

As we all progress through time, the actual specifics of this empowerment will grow and become more and more expected, but as we try to affect change now in the healthcare system, we must be content with a progress towards empowerment - hence the path to empowerment - as opposed to reaching some well-defined steady state.

Patient Destiny reaches Phase II

Over the last number of months, my postings (which I refer to as Phase I) were meant to be at a very general level and to offer a vehicle for awareness and education for everyone - but typical patients, and specifically, those patients with a chronic illness or condition.

It is my belief that there are about 100 million os so Americans and 10 million or more Canadians who would categorize themselves as such.  While different healthcare systems seem to other different strengths, there is a common problem plaguing all of them - and that is: how do we support the 3C's? The 3C's (Consumers with Chronic Conditions) are very familiar with their health systems and for the most part, want to help out the "system". To do this, however, the system MUST let them.