One of my best collaborators through the years has been editor Susan Carr. She “gets it” and always has, and she has the very special set of traits of a good editor-in-chief: she knows what her readers will value and she knows how to guide an article idea through the development process.
Both traits are essential help for an activist (like me) who wants to help people see things differently. To do that work, you can’t stand outside a conversation and throw rocks at it – you have to get inside and understand the conversation, see things as they do, and then point out from their perspective a new way of looking at things.
I first wrote for Susan in 2010, in Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, and a year ago for their cover story Beyond Empowerment: Patients, Paradigms, and Social Movements – my first substantial article advancing the idea that healthcare’s thinking is being held back by an outdated “paradigm of patient.”
Susan approached me recently to do another piece, this time for the EngagingPatients.org blog: The engaged patient is an anomaly. Let’s fix the paradigm. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to lay out my paradigm thoughts in a way that brings it down to “Why does this matter? How does it affect medical practice?”
If that idea interests you, give a look.
Leave a Reply