I am clueless about many things. As in the definition: “Lacking understanding or knowledge.” As in the sentence: “I have no clue!” As in the 20+ years I spent living with a research scientist and enduring mind-numbingly torturous dinner party conversations about zinc and copper sediment in the Fraser River estuary.
That kind of clueless.
Continue reading “If you’re clueless and you know it . . .”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
It took a while to improve upon the humble pedometer. This wearable device, typically attached on or near one’s waist, has been tracking how many steps and how much distance we travel each day ever since its invention by Abraham-Louis Perrelet back in 1780.
But with the explosion of wearable digital activity trackers on the market, I’m now waiting for the randomized control trial that compares those fancy-schmancy new devices head to head with that simple old-fashioned pedometer. In other words:
Q: Just because you make it digital, does it make it better?
Continue reading “Self-tracking device? Got it. Tried it. Ditched it.”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I was one of the four patients interviewed for the Center for Advancing Health report called Here to Stay: What Health Care Leaders Say About Patient Engagement. It’s an interesting, illuminating and frustrating document to read.
The late Dr. Jessie Gruman, president and founder of the CFAH, wrote in her forward to this report:
” What are people talking about when they say ‘patient engagement’ anyway? That phrase encompasses so many concepts and ideas that it’s become meaningless.”
As I wrote here, my own concern (as a person who’s pretty darned engaged in my own health care) is not that the phrase is meaningless. It’s more that non-patients, business and industry have co-opted the concept of patient engagement for their own purposes.
And consider once again that, even in this impressive 170-page CFAH document that is all about patient engagement, there were only four patients interviewed – compared to 31 clinicians, employers/purchaser representatives, health plan administrators, vendors, community health leaders, government organizations, health care contractors and consultants.
Continue reading “Patient engagement (as described by 31 non-patients)”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Have you had the experience of knowing something intuitively, but without realizing that the thing you know already has a name? For example, have you ever found yourself limping along on the losing end of an argument, yet only much later (when it was far too late!) you suddenly thought of just the perfectly witty retort that you should have come up with?
There’s a name for that. The French call this ‘l’esprit d’escalier’, literally “the wit of the staircase”. You’re welcome.
Similarly, I’ve been writing for some time about my niggling frustration over something else that I didn’t even realize had an actual name. Continue reading “‘Healthy Privilege’ – when you just can’t imagine being sick”
Heart Sisters 