WIHI: The Careful and Kind Patient Revolution

Date: December 7, 2017

Featuring: 

• ​​Victor Montori, MD, Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic
• Maggie Breslin, MDes, Director, The Patient Revolution
• Kerri Sparling, Diabetes Advocate; Creator and Author, Six Until Me

When Dr. Victor Montori first started talking about Minimally Disruptive Medicine ​more than a decade ago, he shook the establishment. Dr. Montori, who works with patients with diabetes, had come to believe that shared decision making – an effort to help patients make informed decisions about managing their health problems – wasn't proving all that effective. Dr. Montori felt doctors and nurses weren't factoring in the burden of being a patient with a chronic condition, and the real life challenges – social, economic, or personal – of following prescribed treatment plans. It was time, he argued, for providers to look up from strict protocols and guidelines long enough to get curious about their patients' lives in order to minimize barriers to better health, not add to them. 

 

Fast forward to 2017 and Dr. Montori is more convinced than ever that health care providers need to learn from patients and not the other way around. And to appreciate the circumstances in patients' lives that can compete with managing a chronic condition. This outlook is fundamental to the work of the KER Unit​ Dr. Montori founded at Mayo, the more patient-driven shared decision making​ he now promotes, and a new effort he's dubbed "a patient revolution for careful and kind care." The latter is the focus of a new website​ with recommended reading, tools, and activities.

 

Dr. Montori and his colleagues joined us to discuss this revolution on the December 7 WIHI: The (Careful and Kind) Patient Revolution.