We're living in an age where online space is treated with similar esteem as real life space, so why do the same rules not apply with regards to the doctor/ patient relationship? There seem to be many, and varied online spaces for doctors and healthcare professionals to talk to each other, but patients do not seem to be invited into that space. By the same token, the NRAS website is designed for patients, rather than doctors - so it does work both ways.
Surely, having doctors writing articles and posts, will just maintain the status quo that doctors have the power? However, complaining that doctors have control of cyber-space, whilst not adding my voice to the conversation was my motivator in writing my previous entry.
One of the doctors replied, linking me to another doctor in Portsmouth, who is a big advocate of patient involvement and who does read patient blogs as part of his work - which I think is brilliant. Whether the doctors involved in the Twitter conversation will read this blog is anybody's guess. The point is, if they do read it, it will be because they made the effort to look at my Twitter profile and click through to the link. It won't be because I wrote something for the GMC website, or because there's a regular patient slot on the BMJ blogs, for example. Apparently the BMJ blogs are for anybody who wants to write something; I've not tested this yet.
This article comments: "I think we are a bit elitist as to how we view ourselves in medicine at times" which to me is pretty spot on. (The article is nothing to do with shared care - but is well worth a read). To me, this cuts to the nub of the problems around patients being part of commissioning and directing service provision. I think that doctors, as a group, like the power; they like being top of the hierarchy. Having patients be part of planning services and deciding where the money is spent would challenge that, which is why I don't think it will happen the way it could or should do. If patient involvement is truly going to be part of the NHS, then we need to find ways of breaking down those walls. Having doctors talking to doctors in a doctor only space, especially about patient involvement, doesn't do much to dispel this impression.
So here's the question I didn't realise was waiting to be asked - should we be applying the principles of patient involvement to the online space? Would this help to break down walls between patients and doctors? And if so, how do we do it?
(NB - this post has been updated)
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