Preconference Tidbit #4 - Ordinary-ness

by Paul Uhlig

Over the next several days the daily Tidbits will consider three models that are helpful for understanding collaborative care.

However, today is Sunday. We will start the harder work tomorrow. Today's Tidbit is easy.

Today's Tidbit is a quote from a patient at Concord Hospital. The quote says a lot about collaborative care and its connections of mutual support between professional health care team members, patients, and family members. The team at Concord considered this to be the highest compliment. The patient said...

          "You treated us like ordinary people, and that made all the difference."

 

Collaborative care is profoundly ordinary. It operates at the most basic levels of shared humanness. It takes away mystery, it takes away fear, it listens, it connects, it brings clarity, and, when needed, it comforts. Collaborative care makes hard things easier and bad things better. The gifts and benefits of collaborative care are from human connections: simple, ordinary, authentic human connections.