Here’s the thing. If you’re a doctor who is a fervent advocate for a professional school of thought, and you feel the urge to tell patient advocates they are only “true” ones if they totally join your team … maybe just stop right there.
A premise for patient advocacy by patients themselves is that the interests and priorities of the profession can, sometimes at least, differ and even clash with those of the people they are meant to serve. And given the profession’s reputation for paternalism and arrogance towards patients, taking great care to avoid being patronizing about an area of expertise that isn’t their own makes sense, too, doesn’t it?
Vinay Prasad just swept past all that in
a post on Medscape arguing that patient advocates “must” become “students of evidence-based medicine” or else they risk doing patients harm:
Without the skills of evidence-based medicine, they may not even recognize this. In my mind, there is nothing more painful than watching someone with good intentions place a self-inflicted wound.
How can we make advocates students of evidence-based medicine? Advocates already have the energy and passion to educate themselves, and need only a direction. There is no better starting point than [name of a book on critical appraisal for doctors that’s not open access]. Books like [name of a book on over-diagnosis that’s not open access] and [name of a book on doctors doing harm that’s not open access] are useful starting points. Once the flame of evidence-based medicine is lit, it is hard to extinguish and will propagate itself.
