22 Quotes by Dave deBronkart

Ever tried to get sleep in a hospital? Ever wonder if anyone even taught them what care is? Some hospitals are great, but some sure aren't.

Too often, hospital staff are incented by management to get work done without worrying about care, and clinicians are too often not even trained to think about care.

In my book, 'Let Patients Help,' one chapter is titled 'Let patients vote on what's worth the cost.' That's sensible, right? In other industries, consumer preference is a key determinant in prices.

Careful writing is important for many reasons, not least that intelligent but hurried reporters will trust the presser, resulting in a cascade of secondary damage.

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more.

One of the most stubborn barriers to patient empowerment is the cultural assumption that since the way professionals learned was hard, you must need to be really smart, and you need to be taught in a carefully thought out, methodical sequence.

Diagnosed incidentally with stage IV, grade 4 metastatic renal cell carcinoma, I had bone metastases in my femur (which eventually fractured), ulna, and cranium; five metastases in my lungs; and muscle metastases in my thigh and tongue. Yet six months after diagnosis, my treatment ended: I've not had a drop of anything since.

In other industries, value is defined by the ultimate stakeholder - the one who benefits, or not, from the service. We should do the same in medicine.

Please, let patients help improve healthcare. Let patients help steer our decisions, strategic and practical. Let patients help define what value in medicine is.