Dr Cynthia Delgado on the Importance of Patient Input in Kidney Disease Care

Clinicians treating kidney disease should view patients as stakeholders whose opinions can help drive a holistic approach to care, said Cynthia Delgado, MD, associate professor of medicine at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of California San Francisco Medical Center.

Transcript

How can patient input help lead to better outcomes in kidney disease care?

Well, I actually think it’s very important for patients to advocate for themselves. I think that speaking up about things that you feel are not appropriate or are difficult for you and that patient in that moment are important. I think, you know, in addition to having physicians actually take a second out to really ask the questions about how this is happening or how things are going for the individual is important. But things such as programs, the new initiatives such as the SONG initiative, which is the Standardized Outcomes in Nephrology initiative, which now understands that it’s more important to consider the patient as a stakeholder and the patient’s experience and understanding the contribution of the patient to research, and to push forward the awareness of the things that we need to be doing and considering the patient as a holistic approach to medicine as opposed to a more clinical approach.