InQuiring Minds: Is a Patient Portal Enough?

Compiled and Written by Right Question Intern Jessica Faust. Although IT solutions help involve patients in their appointments through apps and portals, miscommunication between care provider and patient is still a prevalent issue in medicine. The articles below highlight the challenges of engaging patients and demonstrate the prevailing need for non-technological strategies to complement IT solutions […]

InQuiring Minds: High-Tech and Low-Tech Patient Engagement Perspectives

This issue of inQuiring Minds focuses on the different methodologies being discussed to engage patients in their healthcare. The articles below break down this challenge by indicating the need for a combination of high-and low-tech solutions to improve patient involvement and transparency in medicine. “Without information, and without a voice, patients are unlikely to flip […]

Quotes from a Successful Healthcare Seminar

Our first healthcare seminar last week was a success! We were pleased to see an active group of 28 participants, including a mix of social workers, nurses, community health workers, healthcare profession educators, and administrators joining us from not just around Boston, but also Springfield, MA and Rhode Island. We began with an overview and […]

Flip the Clinic: Bringing an Education Movement into Health Care Delivery

“Flipping the classroom” is a relatively recent innovation that requires students to watch videos of lectures or lessons individually before class, then using the following class time to practice problems and critical thinking in groups. Teachers, instead of giving initial lectures, facilitate group learning and are available to answer students’ questions. The flipped classroom transforms […]

Increasing Patient Activation in NYC: The Right Question-Effective Patient Strategy (RQ-EPS)

Last week we posted about a recent article in the WSJ on patient activation. We are calling for more champions for this significant approach to help patients gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage their health needs. Judith Hibbard not only developed the language and framework of patient activation, but also the validated tool […]

We Need More Champions for Patient Activation

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal makes a strong case for patient activation.  Patient activation refers to a patient’s knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage their own health. According to the article, “patients who are highly activated have better outcomes and incur lower costs, studies show, even though as many as 40% of […]

Embrace the Awkward – A Shift in Healthcare Practice

Last weekend we conducted a training for Tufts undergraduate students about the Right Question-Effective Patient Strategy (RQ-EPS) and how they could teach it to patients. The students volunteer at the Sharewood free clinic and provide information about public health topics, check patients’ vitals, and refer patients to a case manager. They inform patients they can […]

Lessons from the American Public Health Association Conference

What do a physician who works with farmworkers, a researcher studying health among incarcerated individuals, a nurse working with cancer patients, and a community health worker helping low-income patients find subsidized housing all have in common? They all stopped by the RQI booth at the American Public Health Association (APHA) conference or attended our presentation, […]

InQuiring Minds: Engaging Patients and Motivating Students

After a brief hiatus we are back with the latest installment of inQuiring Minds. We continue to expand our work in health care, where community health workers are now learning to teach patients to ask better questions and participate in decisions. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates about RQI’s work in health care […]