The journey
My work in international relief as a psychologist and cognitive rehabilitative consultant did not prepare me to be a trauma patient with brain damage. The injuries showed me we patients need to be full partners in our own healthcare and that we need a bridge. That bridge is evidence and the vehicle through which it travels is relationship and shared knowledge. To build this bridge I reinvented my destiny and trained in evidence based healthcare at the University of Oxford, where I am presently pursuing a doctorate.
The better way
Patients are medicine’s most underused asset. Evidence combined with the patient voice can lead to innovation and solutions when evidence meets common needs and is shared with mutual respect and dignity. Patients can offer insights into what happens between the research lab and the medical clinic. Even very sick patients only see the doctor for a few hours out of every year. The rest of the time they self-manage with the tools they are given to work with.
Patients are a wealth of untapped information since they know why something does or doesn’t work and when it is not used in the time between doctor visits. Getting patients to a conference where medical standards are revisited, and new ideas are presented and discussed, is a win-win partnership.
