This is my first question for hospitalized patients: Tell me what you understand. Let me explain. I’m a pediatric specialist. I help hospitalists and pediatricians care for children. Actually, I’m typically one of several providers helping families care for a medically complex children in the hospital. And for better or worse communication can sometimes be ... Continue Reading about Tell Me What You Understand: My First Question for Hospitalized Patients
Information Design
Information is one of this generation's greatest challenges. The explosion of information is matched only by new tools for sharing it with one another. Information design is the next frontier. Ambient monitors living on our wrists and pockets have created spaces for push notifications of all kinds. Endless pummeling of the inbox with this and that with no regard ... Continue Reading about Information Design
Listicles as the Next Health Education Tool
A digital health colleague recently declared that she didn’t like listicles. As you hopefully know, a listicle is a chunk of writing shaped as a list. Wikipedia sums it up: In journalism and blogging, a listicle is a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article. A typical ... Continue Reading about Listicles as the Next Health Education Tool
Physicians as Mediators
Physicians were once the sole mediators of what patients understood about their health. When we wanted to know something, we went to the doctor. And what we understood was limited to what the doctor knew. There was nothing between us and an answer. Not so much anymore. As doctors we've evolved as mediators of the things that help us with answers. Instead of ... Continue Reading about Physicians as Mediators
Doctors and the Private-Professional Divide
Video and communications expert Drew Keller spoke this afternoon at the 6th Annual Health Care Social Media Summit at the Mayo Clinic. He described the experience of working with doctors and suggested that they have two modes of communication: private and professional. In private, and with patients, they have natural, easy ways of using language, expression, and ... Continue Reading about Doctors and the Private-Professional Divide
Communications: A New Job for Physicians
This Scientific American post on communications and storytelling is worth a peek. More than ever, how we translate the technical developments in medicine and healthcare impacts the independent decisions made by patients. The 23andMe dialog has shown that individuals believe they can educate themselves about the subtleties of personal genomic analysis. But ... Continue Reading about Communications: A New Job for Physicians