
I just want to focus on the basics!
Sometimes our health journey seems fraught with peril. So much can go wrong. Unexpected danger lurks around every corner. Yet, team members (caregivers, loved ones, professionals) accompanying us on our health journey all seek a safe ride for us and themselves. Safety is complicated. It begs many questions.
- What kind of safety – emotional, physical, or cultural? Personal, team or organizational safety? Absence of error, mishap or tragedy?
- What about the dynamic tension between risk and rights? We could feel absolutely safe with a trusted Big Sister always watching and protecting. How much of our human rights would we give up for that absolute safety?
- What role do we ePatient drivers play in our own safety? What role do our leaders organizations play in our safety?
- How is safety demonstrated? Surely part of safety is perception. Read More
Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity covers stories of diverse caregiver experience; parents with exceptional children: children with deafness, dwarfism, Downs syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or disability. Others are caring for children who are prodigies, transgender, conceived from rape, or committing crimes. It is a rich and exhausting tome (962 pages) — profoundly sad, exhilarating, and inspiring. Solomon interviews more than 300 families navigating a journey they didn’t choose, caring for their children, facing unexpected challenges. What can those of us committed to participatory medicine learn from their experience?

- Mutual goals and plans set by the health team (people, their caregivers and clinicians)
- Tools and relationships maximize the health team’s ability to follow the plans set to meet mutual goals
- Accessible evidence supports just-in-time health decision-making by people and their caregivers
- The entire health team works from the same goals and data set
- Transparent health care costs
- Healthy health care organizations
- Hardwired continual learning from evolving experience and evidence
- Financial and human incentive alignment

As you were recently informed, due to the need to reduce operating costs, the Hospital is required to eliminate positions. Unfortunately, your position is one of those affected by this difficult decision.
- Bounce back
- Take on difficult challenges and still find meaning in life
- Respond positively to difficult situations
- Rise above adversity
- Cope when things look bleak
- Tap into hope
- Transform unfavorable situations into wisdom, insight, and compassion
- Endure
- The capacity to make and carry out realistic plans
- Communication and problem-solving skills
- A positive or optimistic view of life
- Confidence in personal strengths and abilities
- The capacity to manage strong feelings, emotions, and impulses