This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started here. The series is addressed to patients and advocates who basically know how to speak on a subject but want to make a business out of it. I’ll try to be clear to all readers, but parts may assume you’ve read earlier entries.
Academy cadets, I hope this entry will be useful in one of our key tasks: conveying to potential clients that there’s genuine business value in hearing a capable speaker present the patient’s perspective.
This series has often discussed how to establish with a client the business value of your time. Last October, at the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media Summit, I met up with another speaker, a real guru of physician social media, Greg Matthews. His Twitter handle is @Chimoose (“I’m a moose of a guy from Chicago”), and his cred includes running MDigitalLife (“MD Digital,” get it?), being a health advisor to the big-time South By Southwest conference, and more. He knows business, he knows the world of medicine, he knows what he’s doing … to the point where Mayo’s Center for Social Media had him come speak this year.
And Greg surprised me by mentioning that our first conversation, about possibly speaking at an event, had changed his view of this subject. His words were so powerful that I asked if we could record it. We sat down spontaneously (with no producer to spiff up my wardrobe, ahem) and reprised our chat.
I hope other event planners can hear the words of this consultant and see how he sees things. (Email subscribers, click here to come see the video online.)
You’re welcome to show this to event planners – and other healthcare planners, because this isn’t just about speaking at conferences. If we’re to heed the Institute of Medicine’s advice that healthcare must be “anchored on patient needs and perspectives,” we gotta get real about doing something about it.
Near the end of the conversation I mention the new (in 2014) Patient Voice Institute, which is also working on improving recognition of patient voices. (I’m one of their volunteer advisors.)
Thanks, @Chimoose, for your candor and for reminding me to get this long-overdue item posted!
Next in the series: #22: Diary of an Invited Speaker
I am a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner (working in private practice outpatient service). When teaching nursing students and when serving in nursing management & administration, I have focused on two vital facts. 1) Compassion: as health care providers we are of no help if we are not first and foremost, compassionate. 2) Providers NEVER save lives: at best, we create an environment that is conducive to healing. The patients save their own lives. We are responsible to assist patients in doing so.
In the spirit of these basic beliefs, I am continually seeking ways to engage my patients, to listen to my patients, and to assist them in creating a plan of action that is true to themselves.
Thank you, ePatient Dave for the valuable service you provide.
Thank YOU! Thank you for the work you do, especially the teaching. And I completely love your position of putting the power in the *patient’s* hands, even when the patient has such challenges. To me what you said perfectly embodies what nurse practitioners are about, which is why I love NPs so much.
I spoke a few years ago at the AANP conference in Nashville – here’s my post before the speech: here it is!
And here’s the blog post I just added, to publish the video and companion slides. https://www.epatientdave.com/2017/02/06/the-lost-keynote-video-aanp-2014