Empowered patient: A program to improve people with Parkinson’s communication with health care professionals

BACKGROUND: Communication breakdown between patients and health care professionals poses an accessibility gap preventing adequate health care. The Empowered Patient Program was developed to support people with Parkinson’s in improving their health communication skills/strategies and thus facilitate the accessibility gap in their care. OBJECTIVE: Our pilot study aimed to test the feasibility and preliminary effect of the Empowered Patient Program within a small cohort of individuals with Parkinson’s disease. METHODS: We completed a pre-test-post-test pilot study. Eight participants completed the Empowered Patient Program for this pilot study. Data collection was completed by administering a questionnaire prior to the program, immediately after program completion, and three months post-completion. We additionally conducted two telephone interviews with the participants to qualitatively gather feedback on the program. RESULTS: The program elucidated statistically significant improvement across domains/areas of knowledge (p = 0.01) and self-perceived communication skills (p = 0.04) among the participants. Through feedback from the patient interviews, it was confirmed that these significant improvements were owed largely to the high level of organization, intuitive user interface, and suitable content of the program for this cohort. CONCLUSIONS: The Empowered Patient Program pilot resulted in a desired outcome indicating its satisfactory development. The next steps are to test the Empowered Patient program in a larger sample.