Free livestream: https://vimeo.com/event/23660
A year after my case ended, my hospital (Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess) started a wonderful new thing: a patient day, where some of the world’s top authorities on kidney cancer treatment share the latest news (and other things) with patients, families, and caregivers. And they made it free. Including breakfast and lunch (and parking). (Good food, too!)
They’ve done it again every spring since then, so this year is the 12th. It’s next Friday at the Newton Marriott, outside Boston. Breakfast is at 8:00, and the sessions start at 8:30.
To register call Alison Levy, 617-667-0226 or email her.
This is patient-centered!
I have to give full credit to how patient-oriented my care team has always been: at a follow-up visit a year after my cancer, my oncologist, Dr David McDermott, said, “I wish we could bottle the way you were” (informed and engaged) so they could “administer it” to patients. A few months later they announced the first edition of this event, making a point of giving away the latest information to any patient who can show up.
And then, for people who can’t show up, as the years went by they added live streaming. Also free. (This year: https://vimeo.com/event/23660)
Not only that; as I often say in my speeches, a key part of my survival was information I got on how to anticipate and cope with side effects – information I’d asked for, which doesn’t exist in the medical literature. A few years later my care team showed me a new booklet they’d produced, on exactly that. How’s that for patient-clinician partnership??
Here’s to all care providers everywhere who believe – and act on the belief – that if patients want to be informed, they should be given the chance – to “see the dragon I am slaying,” as one patient put it. None of this “stay off the internet” garbage for this team; this truly is patient-centered care, as the patients define it. Thank you to the Dana Farber / Harvard Cancer Center, of which my team is a part.
Here’s the full page PDF version of the flyer.
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