Abstract
Dear Colleagues
We've made it to the second issue of JPE! In this issue, we explore ideas about compassion in healthcare, narratives of our patients, and factors influencing HCAHPS data. Again, we begin and end with the caregiver and patient perspectives. This time around, I'm taking the liberty of sharing some thoughts beyond the journal. Let's mix it up.
On my mind recently is all the buzz about “patient activation.” I'm intrigued to learn more about this as a concept. How is it different from patients engaged with their providers and their management through effective communication and relationships? As one of my brilliant colleagues pointed out, it has an implication that we press a button and then patients are “activated.” To take it one step further, I worry that we may make assumptions about what patient activation means to a given patient, when, in fact, we do not know.
I think it is a moving, dynamic target. I may be activated one day and not activated another for a given behavior or a given disease. In my own multiple sclerosis clinic, some patients tell me that they forget they have the disease and are only reminded that they do (and subsequently saddened) when they have to come in for an appointment.
It begs the question: Can we even assume that all patients want to be activated? Maybe for some, what's best is to let them live a full life not grounded in managing their MyChart and appointments. Activated to live beyond their diagnosis. Now that's something to shoot for.
Feel free to share your own thoughts with me, and thanks to all of you for your support.
Sincerely,
On the Cover
Being the daughter of a painter, it was my automatic response to represent my father's life through painting when he suddenly passed away in 2013, leaving a large hole in our family. Though my subject matter is fairly similar to what I was painting before my dad passed away, the purpose behind my paintings drastically changed after his heart attack.
The chair in which he read, the small art studio in which he worked, the many pairs of glasses that he would inevitably lose … all of these seemingly simple things became paintings. My work is both an act and visual representation of remembrance, grief and mourning. By sitting in these spaces and reflecting upon my dad, I have gained a steady acceptance of his absence. I have created this body of work in a timely fashion because, as each month goes by, the tools in the garage are used and organized differently, art and history magazines are cleaned up off the kitchen table, his clothing removed from the dresser drawers. Our house changes, and with each change it is harder to see where my dad existed. And so before these small reminders disappear, it is my hope and purpose to honor my dad in the best way I know how – using the skills he originally passed down to me.
More paintings can be found at: www.maggiehubbard.wordpress.com.