Mission Statement

The best intentioned among us may draw a losing ticket in respect to our healthcare system and experience trauma or impoverishment when serious medical problems occur. Through the collective process of articulating individual needs, we may be able to gain intelligence, and the ability, to improve our lot.

One study shows patients who choose their own therapies from various options experience fewer side affects than those who are told what to do. Another indicates doctors who lack time to hear their patients’ full concerns, are themselves prone to both mental and physical illness. A third reveals that one third of the people receiving chemotherapy don’t wish to do so but submit to please their loved ones.

What should one ask or tell the doctor but never gets the chance? We can’t wait like toads for the wizard to restore us, yet studies show, the average patient, leaving the doctor’s office, retains just 10% of what was presented. While helping patients and families navigate the medical system, Patient’s Deck of Cards will coach them to effectively engage in their own care.

We all agree that the dying need to feel connected throughout. Late-stage patient’s wishes may become rapidly evident, facilitated by Hospice. But prior are often years of confusion that deplete a patient’s spirits, finances, and test their loved ones emotionally. When health records are standardized and more people insured, doctors will spend even less time with us. The Patient’s Deck of Cards prompt us to weigh our options and treatment plans earlier on.

For patients who might participate in medical trials, the stress of culling through stacks of information about side effects and projected life expectancy may well thwart any benefit. Lacking a doctor for a family member, the evaluation of such material can be overwhelming.

Some PDC question cards, handed to a nurse, doctor or impartial party, will request information summaries be written on the flip side and given back to patients or family. Soon, an impartial database, perhaps “Science Commons” from Berkeley’s Open Science Summit, speedily accessed by a “nurse intern,” will yield up information, approved by the doctor, and appropriate to the patient’s needs.

It’s enough to picture being buried in bills when ill. We can’t additionally be expected, unaided, to decipher literature from pharmaceutical companies, await callbacks from support groups, or to troll the Internet. The latter especially, as often as not, being misleading to the point of despair.

Just as intelligence doesn’t “reside” in universities, health doesn’t contain itself within walls of hospitals and doctor’s offices. We must encourage our families and friends to understand that we each participate in our own health or illness at all times; what we come to “expect” can powerfully determine our illness’s outcome. What do we learn when the most significant communication from our physician is that he/she is evading our question?

From conversations and meetings with a range of people, lots with aging parents, there seems a need for something tangible, that can move us from “being polite” at the doctor’s office to getting our basic concerns heard and resolved.

Patient's Deck of Cards, like cue cards, will help families and groups of friends focus on their health issues by reviewing sample questions they can later present to their doctors. The doctors, their time restraints now considered, will better serve the patient, and/or direct them to pertinent information resources.

It’s in the patient’s interest to construct questions; to look over, choose, and even contribute to those submitted by others. Going to school we have handbooks, orientation, and advisors. It shouldn’t be that when dealing with medical questions we’re on our own.

The cards will be free, if downloaded from the Internet, with boxes of hard copies available for doctor’s waiting rooms and community groups. When online, users create or “borrow” selected questions, drag them to a template, and print out the cards on widely-available post card stock.

PDC was conceived for patient's questions, statements, and to help express concerns they may have a hard time bringing forward. For more clarity there are cards too, for doctors. These can elicit information that may not have been forthcoming, and can be sent home with patients. Also there are cards to help any involved family and friends. Cards will be updated and changed periodically.

Lives slow down when we’re ill, relationships change; we have little memory, since "modern medicine," of how our ancestors dealt with death and illness. We are challenged to think afresh. Doctors can't heal us if they don't understand what we want, it's up to us-- patients and families-- to communicate better!

Asking after doctor appointments, lab tests, and hospitalization, patients may encounter an unfamiliar urgency to obey medical staff who themselves are pressured by industries that have little interest in the patient’s health.

When facing life-altering disease, we need tools to assess the advice of doctors, and the time to respond in each person’s manner (including refusal) to services offered. If one wishes the medical process to remain a mystery, that too, should be expressed and respected.

Patients can work with the Deck of Cards when it’s convenient, when being taken to an appointment, while in a waiting room—when they are in the mood.

When ill we may want to experience and appreciate those around us, reflect on personal issues, and take matters one at a time. Patients Deck of Cards will help patients communicate and get the answers they’re entitled to, if and as they feel like it.