The health care fix? Listening, truly listening, to patients

Cancer patient advocate Grace Cordovano wants medical schools to teach young doctors to see the health care experience through their patients’ eyes. How? Cordovano challenges medical schools to invite patients for regular story-sharing sessions and, “not just for a photo-op.”

“My dearest medical schools, you need to change the lens your students are looking through to learn. They need to understand the human repercussions of the disease they so astutely diagnose,” she writes in a blog post titled “The Fix for Healthcare: A Tsunami.”

She says true patient-physician interaction should include:

• Sharing the joys and tribulations of a parent whose child was saved.
• Sitting with a spouse who has lost their loved one to cancer.
• Hearing the first-hand accounts of those who are living with a chronic disease.

Cordovano urges doctors to initiate honest discussions with patients who have had frustrating, even exploitive health care experiences.

“We need to start a movement, incorporating patients’ and caregivers’ stories and experiences into medical education and health care design,” she writes. “It’s a blatantly missing piece.”

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