Can a patient teach medical school? Of course, according to The Mayo Clinic. They’ve been leading medicine for decades, so why wouldn’t they lead here? Today, The Mayo Clinic announced that e-Patient Dave deBronkart would serve as the 2015 Visiting Professor:

Patient engagement and empowerment is a natural extension of Dr. Will Mayo’s vision of a medicine as a cooperative science. We are therefore honored to announce Dave deBronkart (aka “e-Patient Dave”) as our 2015 Visiting Professor to help spread this powerful message. We look forward to his March, 2015 visit!

This represents a milestone for the medical profession in recognizing the emerging role of the patient in education.  Congratulations to Dave deBronkart for once again serving as an ambassador and pioneer. He has spent the better part of the past decade shaping the voice of a population once marginalized by medicine.

In a related note, the patient voice in medical education has received recent attention from the education community through Stanford’s Medical Education in the New Millennium. Next year, Larry Chu’s MedX | Ed conference promises a heavy patient influence in helping to shape a new generation of providers.

The growing voice of the patient in medical education is a natural derivative of the mature voice of the patient in the clinical encounter.