Taxonomy of Burden

In a couple of weeks, we will discuss alternative ways to treat patients.  As I was following e-patient Dave's website, I found this graphic, called the Taxonomy of Burden (click on it to get a better view, and download it, share it.  It's “Creative Commons Share-Alike with Attribution” – anyone is welcome to reuse it, as long as the credit is carried with it),  Then I read further...

You can download the pdf here.

Dave learned about the graphic you see here, which was published last year as part of a paper in the journal BMC Medicine. 

I love it. At the very center is one item: the word “burden.” Coming out from it are three dots:

• Healthcare tasks: the things you’re told to do.
• Consequences of healthcare tasks imposed on patients. (See above!)
• Factors that worsen the burden of treatment: communication problems, getting to and from the doctor’s office, etc etc.

Then, extending from each, are additional realities: under Tasks are paperwork, understanding the illness, follow-up, rearranging life etc etc; under Consequences are impact on work, financial impact, etc etc; under Factors that worsen are the many many things that just plain get in the way of doing the right thing.

Why do I love this graphic? That whole thing could be printed out as an outline list, many pages long, but that has no “all at once” impact: you browse a list item by item, but this visualizes it all at once, making you realize: “Holy crap! Look at all this!”

I felt the same way.  It's worth looking at it in some detail.  It provides a sobering view of all the reasons why healthcare is so darn complex.  But you knew that!

The diagram is from this article in BMC Medicine: bit.ly/TaxonomyOfBurden, by Viet-Thi Tran , Caroline Barnes, Victor Montori, Bruno Falissard and Philippe Ravaud.

I then looked up Victor Montori because he thanked Dave for the post, and learned about The Patient Revolution, which fit the book we will read later, When Doctors Don't Listen.  The first 2 of their 8 pillars are about the patient telling their story.    This is an important part of The Patient Revolution.  You can find videos there, too.   More on that later.

Check out Dave's Resources link.  The Communities link is especially interesting, but so is his blog.  As you can see, I enjoyed reading it.  Thought you might find it useful, too.  😊