Recently something rather awful, but also completely routine happened to me—I had a miscarriage. To be precise, I had two miscarriages within seven days: one spontaneous miscarriage and one medical […]
Patient and public perspectives
Glyn Elwyn: Expecting too much of “patient decision aids”
Too many people hoped that by introducing tools called “patient decision aids” we would quickly bring about shared decision making in clinical encounters. As if the tools, by themselves, could […]
Tessa Richards: Should patient advocates adopt guerilla tactics?
Activism and new ways of getting input from a much wider range of patients and communities are needed to advance patient and public partnership in health systems […]
Miles Sibley: Changing the culture of learning from deaths
With the revelation that a “toxic culture” led to the deaths of mothers and babies at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, patient safety in maternity services is once […]
Alf Collins: We still pay far too little attention to patient feedback, patient involvement, and patient leadership
I gave up on medicine very early in my career. When I started medical school in the seventies, it seemed to be a brutal business, with little thought given to […]
Access to healthcare data is only of benefit if it can improve disease outcomes
Being part of the patient public group of the UK Colorectal Cancer Intelligence Hub has helped these authors recognise the power of healthcare data in research The collection and use […]
Emma Sutton: The problem of too many hats—involving clinician-patients in PPI
Patients who are also researchers and clinicians have an important part to play in quality improvement, says Emma Sutton […]
Sarah Markham: Can virtual reality help patients with OCD?
The creative use of mobile and wearable health information and sensing technologies—also known as mHealth—may have the potential to reduce the cost of healthcare and improve wellbeing in numerous ways. […]
Medicine X—encouraging public involvement around the world
What is Stanford Medicine X or MedX? Is it just another conference? A movement? A programme? A new way of doing health research? Or just another cynical ploy by an […]
Carol Liddle: COPD outcomes—treating the individual, not the condition
Support for people with COPD should be targeted so that individuals develop the skills they need to manage their condition, says Carol Liddle […]