A few weeks ago, I had a mystery bout of vertigo. It could have been triggered by any of my existing medical conditions, or something completely unrelated. It wasn’t serious enough to invest the time and money necessary to figure it out, but I knew it was going to bother me until I had some sort of answer.

Well, I think I have figured it out.

And, just like most things medical, finding the answer was far from straightforward.

I have spent significant time thinking, writing, and talking about trust in healthcare, primarily the lack of it  between patients and non-patient stakeholders. The lack of trust within the healthcare system affects nearly every patient-facing aspect of the system, and it sits at the crossroads of a bulk of the roadblocks to improved outcomes.

The word “just” is a minimizer. Several years ago, during a random conversation, whoever was speaking said something and that just clicked into place. Back then I used it all the time. My symptoms “just made me tired” or, “I’ll be ok. My XXXX was “just” acting up.”

I hadn’t realized until then that I was communicating that the difficulties that come with patient life were no big deal.

After that I made a conscious effort to use “just” in a more appropriate context.

Recently, I ran into a bit of a similar situation with a phrase I have never used, but which I have heard often in my work.

“We’re all patients.”

Wellll . . .

Yes and no.

Happy Chronic Disease Month!

Kinda like saying Happy Passover. Passover marks a horrible era in history that culminated in many deaths and was the result of (allegorically speaking) about a century of enslavement. As my friend, Squirrel (for the purposes of this blog) says, Happy Plagues of [fill in the plagues] Day!

But the point isn’t the diseases themselves, but the acknowledgment that hundreds of millions of people live their lives with an extra burden. Literally half of the American population, and many of us with multiples.

This year, I had the opportunity to conduct patient interviews for a client.

I haven’t been admitted to a hospital in 25 years. I have been in an emergency room twice, I think, once for a broken pinkie and once for a medication-induced “cardiac incident”. And now a third time.

Around 3 a.m. one morning, I woke up because I was dreaming that the room was spinning. Weird, right? When I opened my eyes, I got the rude awakening that it wasn’t just a dream.

If you have ever experienced vertigo, you know it’s panic inducing. Your environment moves in ways you are not, and most of the time you have no idea why. And no idea how to stop it. If you are lucky, it goes away on its own.

I was not lucky.

I consider myself fairly savvy about ad campaigns and marketing schemes. Not perfectly immune, but I am happy to let someone give their spiel and then walk away. After all, it’s good practice for them.

But the ads on my timewaster apps are different. They’re just annoying and I can’t skip them fast enough.

But there was this one.

It had dragons and knights and castles and pirates. All the things to catch my fantasy-loving eye. I resisted for years. But about six months ago, I finally broke.

A few years ago, I wrote about how I didn’t think that traditional organizing wasn’t politically effective anymore, and that coalitions – teaming up with stakeholders to achieve a common goal, even if you weren’t a big fan of your partners – were the way to move forward. Coalition-building makes for some strange bedfellows.

I still believe that, even as the current administration challenges every aspect of healthcare infrastructure, at both private and public levels. Could make for even stranger bedfellows.

If you watch TV with commercials, it is impossible to avoid the Zocdoc ads, especially during flu season. In theory, Zocdoc is a great idea. I always thought finding a clinician who works for you is sort of like dating. It’s as much about matching with their personality as it is evaluating their skills.

And much like dating it can take a lot of tries to find a good one. Zocdoc has set itself up as the tool to make the process easier.

Except…

Way back before I was born, as the media and marketing was in their adolescence, Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” He argued that in communication, the way a message is delivered is just as, if not more, important as the message itself. (Got that from one of my favorite college courses on journalism and politics.)

As with many theories, this one has a broader application beyond the general rules of communication. For our purposes, I would say it is particularly true in healthcare. We already know that trust is a factor in getting messages out and reaching populations that fundamentally don’t trust the healthcare systems. It’s why community health centers are such a good idea and why healthcare professionals often seek to enlist help from religious and community leaders.

But it is bigger than that.