e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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New wheelchair icon nails the shift to “empowered and engaged”

Brian Glenney and Sara Hendren holding the new wheelchair sign in front of the old one
Photo by John Tlumacki, Boston Globe staff. Caption: “Brian Glenney and Sara Hendren have begun a campaign to change the design of wheelchair signs.”

My Twitter feed was abuzz yesterday with last week’s Boston Globe article by Billy Baker, Wheelchair icon revamped by guerrilla art project, and boy am I glad: aside from being a great story, it sums up everything I’ve been trying to explain about the shift to patient engagement.

I’ve spent time in a wheelchair, I used to teach in a school for handicapped kids, and my wife sometimes uses a chair, especially in airports. The usual view of the chair-bound person is as limited, confined, less able. In some ways that’s valid, but too often it’s overdone. Look at this photo, and compare the new icon with the one in the back:

  • Old: Occupant is sitting, being wheeled around.
    New: Occupant is in power, leaning forward, doing as much as s/he can. (Their site says “Here the person is the ‘driver’ or decision maker about her mobility.”)
  • Old: Occupant seems to be part of the chair.
    New (per the Globe): “the human [is] distinct from the chair, in an active position, with a feeling of forward movement.”

I’ll extend the metaphor: [Read more…]

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My view of patient experience: “care that’s more caring.”

Pat Rullo of Speak Up and Stay Alive RadiOh! (Twitter @SpeakUpRadioh) is writing a piece for the Association for Patient Experience, whose board chair is Dr. Jim Merlino, Chief Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic. (Jim and I had a 7 minute hallway interview at TEDMED 2012; video is at bottom of this post.) Pat wrote, asking “your personal definition of the patient experience … It can be one word – one sentence – or as long as you choose. What does the patient experience mean to you?”

I get a million requests like this (“please write something for us”), and mostly I have to say no, because my backlog of broken promises and overdue blog posts is embarrassing. But I responded to this one because

  • It’s a short, focused question
  • It’s directly aligned with thoughts I’m already working on
  • I can blog the result. :-)  (That’s a method I learned years ago from the amazing Ted Eytan of Kaiser.)

Here’s my response: [Read more…]