In this Episode of Butterfly Arose I begin to look at the larger system of medical care in the Unted States. I use my own experiences with to keep from getting too much into ethereal ideas and to hold myself accountable to humility as I acknowledge that my own experiences influence my ability to be objective.

In this episode of Butterfly Arose I talk about an important way researchers turn qualitative information into quantitative information, and some of the challenges when we try to spread improvements throughout medical care.

In this episode of Butterfly Arose, I use specific examples from my own experiences to show why patient stories are important to improving the quality of health care. I also use them to demonstrate that, while it would be wonderful to have lots of patient stories, in reality we often have to make do with what is available, and some initial thoughts on the gifts and challenges this approach brings to health care improvement.

In this episode of Butterfly Arose, I challenge you to appreciate the world of complexity we uncover when we actively try to improve and organization.

Using the example of baking bread I show how complicated it can really get, and apply that seemingly simple example to changes being made in healthcare.

In Episode 16 of Butterfly Arose I used my personal experiences as a patient partner volunteer to talk about the value of Person and Family Centered Care from the patient and family perspective. But PFCC is a process of system improvement, and that means the staff of a health care organization must also be intimately involved.

In this episode I'll talk about the third group, the Person and Family Centered Care staff. These are the employees who find patients and their family members who are willing to become volunteers.

In this episode of Butterfly Arose I go more deeply into Person and Family Centered Care. I use my own experiences as both a volunteer and an employee to see what benefits PFCC can bring to healthcare from the patient perrspective.

For doctors, nurses and other practitioners the medical system asks a lot. Be excellent and knowledgable in medical science, but also kind and empathetic. Give every patient the best care, but hurry up, you day is full of appointments. Let's take a look at what it looks like from their point of view.

In the last episode I talked about the experiences of four people; three who are living after treatment for cancer, and one who recovered from debilitating symptoms that were at first misdiagnosed as dementia. All four stories raised important questions about the role of patients in their own recovery from medical issues. We began to look at what patients are saying they need from themselves, and from the medical system for everyone to receive high quality care.

In this episode we look at several more stories from the patient perspective to see what we can learn about our complex system of health care.

In the last two episodes of Butterfly Arose I asked you to think about the complex world of health care from the perspective of doctors and health care systems trying to provide high quality care to their patients. We looked at the challenges and opportunities for both individual doctors and institutions.

In this episode I delve into how things look from the patient perspective. What is it like to get high quality treatment from the patient experience? I use three examples of patients living after treatment for cancer, and a surprising story about Alzheimer's as well.

This episode of Butterfly Arose continues learning from Doctor Danielle Ofri in her book When We Do Harm, A Doctor Confronts Medical Error. Where the last episode looked at procedural errors, this one looks at cognitive errors, the harm they can cause and what, if anything, can be done about them.

As always, you can find links to books and articles on the sections of my website that refer to either podcast.