Society for Participatory Medicine
The Society for Participatory Medicine (S4PM) is a not-for-profit organization devoted to promoting the concept of participatory medicine, where providers and patients closely collaborate in medical decision making and patients participation is encouraged and valued. Participatory Medicine is a model of cooperative health care that seeks to achieve active involvement by patients, professionals, caregivers with in a patient centered culture based on transparency and empathy. The goal of such collaboration is to decrease medical errors, improve patient education, increase patient satisfaction and improve outcomes.
History
S4PM was started in January 2009 when health information became increasingly available for patients on the internet and patients started to benefit from a community of other patients and patients online. In 2007, Dave deBronkart, who is one of the founding members of S4PM, was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer with a grim prognosis. His physician prompted him to join online communities for cancer patients to gather knowledge he could share with his care team. "What I found and what I continue to hear today ... is that there's a lot of information developed in the last few years that is not yet in the hands of every oncologist in the world," said deBronkart, a software technology professional in Nashua, N.H.[1] A common concern at that time was that patients will bog down physicians with stack google articles, which they don't have the time to read in the course of a visit. But as the breadth and quality of information increased over the years, patients were prepared with better information to ask their physicians better questions.
