Maxime Lê: A patient’s prescription to the ailing healthcare system is team-based care

[Sandra Holdsworth]

As a patient with chronic illness and an invisible disability, navigating the healthcare system can often feel overwhelming and fragmented.

The experience of moving from one healthcare practitioner to another, repeating your story each time, and trying to manage your care on your own can lead to frustration and gaps in care. Some people even fall through the cracks, especially if they face social and economic inequities and do not have the capacity or connections to navigate the system on their own.

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[Chris Johnston]

@Sandra-Holdsworth Thanks for sharing this Sandra! It’s an interesting read. I particularly value the suggestion to break open the medical schools’ curricula.

I’d personally love to see a wholesale reform of the curricula with more time devoted to women’s health issues which is broader than just reproductive, chronic illness, primary care research, accelerating knowledge translation and collaboration which extends beyond team based care into genuine partnership with patients and their communities.

Oddly, having just very recently been attached to a new doctor after over seven years in limbo on the Health Connect Registry in BC, I find myself in an unanticipated quandary. Far from feeling relieved at the prospect of being finally able to access care, I find I’m more than a little terrified to even make an initial appointment for fear of being judged to be too great a burden, and scaring her into dropping me back onto the registry. I feel beholden and disempowered and like I’m walking a tightrope to access the care I need.

In an ideal system, we need team based care that embraces the patient as both the focus of the work and as a full partner in their own care.

[Joan Tu]

@Chris-Johnston Agree with you very much on this: "collaboration which extends beyond team based care into genuine partnership with patients and their communities".