I am a strong believer of increasing access to care through education and advocacy. It is our theme at MOLLI Surgical for Breast Cancer Awareness Month and helped inspire the creation of my Facebook Live show, Breast Practices.
Healthcare has gotten incredibly complicated for patients, and it shows in the language that we use within our industry. This is symptomatic of an underlying problem. We say patient-centered care a lot. Well, why do we need to say that when healthcare was always supposed to be about the patient?
Patient-centered care starts with learning about the patient experience. People have a choice about their healthcare – from the physician they choose to treatment options. However, most people don’t know that they have a choice. This is where education comes in. It empowers patients and puts them in the driver’s seat of their own healthcare.
With Breast Practices, I wanted to foster a learning environment and bring people together in an easy to digest format. I am grateful to have a forum – where I can talk with patients, patient advocates, physicians, various members of care teams, and innovators in breast cancer research – to inspire action in areas like shared decision-making, health and racial disparities, patient advocacy, along with other current issues in the breast cancer community, like pinkwashing.
By bringing the breast cancer community together this way, I hope to clarify what we mean by patient-centered care and contribute to advancing coordinated care that’s intuitive for patients and their families to navigate.
On Breast Practices, we believe education and advocacy are vital to breast cancer patients getting the care that’s right for them. Over the last year, several physicians told us there was a need for better educational resources related to breast localization, a procedure that often occurs before breast-conserving surgery.
At the same time, we were hearing from patients on the show that they wished they were better prepared for what to expect and knew about their options regarding localization. With my team at MOLLI Surgical, we decided to address this gap by developing a Breast Localization Toolkit that patients and physicians can use to facilitate conversations about treatment and well-being.
Another initiative we’re working on is a program called H.O.P.E. (Help-Optimism-Positivity-Encouragement)™. It will help amplify physicians’ patient education efforts and support breast cancer patients in their care decisions. We hope to launch it soon, so stay tuned.
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Published by:
Pres. & CEO at MOLLI Surgical, dedicated to bringing people together for impact in healthcare through medical devices.
Increasing access to care through education and advocacy is not just a theme for #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth. It has always been our focus at MOLLI Surgical, and helped inspire the creation of my Facebook Live show, #BreastPractices. Read my latest blog for more! #breastcancer #patientcenteredcare #shareddecisionmaking #bcam #ACTober #pinkwashing #healthcare #breastcancerawareness