If you don’t know Jess Jacobs, she’s a passionate patient advocate that use to work for the federal government. Although, she might be best known for her tweets from the hospital. If you scroll back through her Twitter feed, I’m sure you’ll find them.
Today Jess offered up this tweet to reframe our discussion on plans of care and patient instructions:
These are the most actionable patient instructions I've ever seen. Dr. Joe @PriviaHealth's my #PCP unicorn! @MsWZ pic.twitter.com/smiN08eVFh
— Jess Jacobs (@jess_jacobs) October 30, 2015
I’m sure that most doctors will mock these instructions, but it definitely illustrates a very different relationship between doctor and patient. How many doctors go to this extent to make sure that their patients are well? I’m sure many of them are asking “I’d love to go that deep with patients, but how do I get paid for it?”
I’ve regularly argued that we need deeper interactions with a healthcare professional if we want to be truly healthy and not just continue to treat the sicknesses we have. However, I don’t think these interactions will happen with a doctor. This type of relationship needs someone that’s more social worker than doctor.
Where will all this go? I’m not sure, but seeing these patient instructions sure caused me to rethink the doctor-patient relationship.
[…] are signs of hope. On October 30th, just after the conference, John Lynn posted this blog about a “new look” patient instruction given to Jess Jacobs. There is also the wonderful […]