I’ve been on both sides of this.

I’ve been on both sides of this. I’ve previously worked as a HIPAA consultant a few years ago. I also lived the chronically ill lifestyle for a few years and still have residual issues. In of itself, “patient” isn’t as bad as other labels organizations apply to people. Think of “percentages,” “markets,” “demographics,” and other economic labels.

Care providers who directly work with patients do see them as people. I spent three months in several hospitals and noticed nursing staff especially knew how to make meaningful connections with my family and me. Within the nursing context, patients are people. It’s the business context where dehumanization begins.

The more business there is in between patients and care providers, the further the dehumanization. If you have good insurance and money isn’t a primary concern, you’ll get the best humanized care available. I think everybody knows how poorly the uninsured are treated.

Then there is the reality of making tough decisions simply because there is no one-to-one patient/caregiver ratio.

Recently my grandfather passed away and one of the things that confused all of us was the term “bed.” When you talk medicare, nursing homes, palliative care, and hospice, “bed” is used as a catch-all term for patient, funding source, legally approved slot, and the physical bed itself. The discussion and planning of all this was far removed from my grandfather. I didn’t like “bed” used this way, but in the end, I realized there is a purpose to having conversations removed from emotions. They have to happen regardless.

Many years ago, doctors in the U.S. had to update their lexicon when dealing with patients. For example, they stopped using “infant” and began using “baby.” But this happened at the patient interaction level and was done specifically to improve bed-side manner.

Care providers must oscillate between empathetic connections and the detachment needed to make critical decisions. It’s a tough job to switch modes like that, and just like their patients, doctors and nurses are people too. I don’t envy them.

The folks who most need to re-humanize people are on the business side of things. Across all industries it would be helpful if organizations stopped dehumanizing people.

“Patient” is necessary because we do need to classify people in a way we can track and help them. However, instead of eliminating the term, I think it’s more reasonable to use it judiciously. Ensure “patient” is always used in a context where it’s clear it’s a person. That means crafting its use.

In my experience, you can’t get support for the technologies you mention when a bottom-line culture doesn’t value people anyway. The most effective way to help facilitate this is to treat it as part of an overall content strategy standardizing organizational media. For example, infographics shouldn’t contain just numbers and PowerPoint presentations should include photos of people when discussing business outcomes.

Keep up the good work. You’re really on to something here. Recognizing patients as people changes the context of creating for them, to be sure. If we could only disassociate people from Soilent Green…