The Beauty of Collaboration In Healthcare: Juliane Zielonka at TEDxBarcelonaChange

Juliane Zielonka -- Founder and managing director of www.uterus-myomatosus.net, Berlin
Juliane founded a platform which empowers over 20 million women in German speaking countries with health knowledge, shortens their journey to find the right physician and opens easy access to comprehensive care centers. Juliane Zielonka studied Psychology, English and German language.
She has a professional training in Graphic Design with focus on new media and holds a diploma in Marketing and Communications. She combines 18 years of profound knowledge in online-communication, social media, content production (editorial and PR side) and is very well experienced in global corporate branding and the transformation of strategy into measurable operations.
In 2010 she experienced intense stakeholder conflicts within the German healthcare system. She identified major problems and using her skills she crafted a solution. To bring her vision of innovative female healthcare to life, she founded a publishing and media services company called "Die Artverwandten". The social entrepreneur is a Berlin based technology enthusiast, believes in the Cluetrain Manifesto and thinks that books will turn into "living documents": facilitating network rooms that connect the ones belonging together.
Being a member of the health 2.0 Berlin steering committee, she fosters the spirit of people-centered healthcare by organising events and connecting healthcare stakeholders. tedx barcelona change
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

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Juliane talks about how when you first enter a medical care facility for whatever reason it may be, you feel like a person that seeks answers or help, and when you leave, you feel as though you are just another person in a doctor's rolodex of patients. In other words, you feel unimportant, and you don't feel any sympathy from your care provider. She talks about women that may be given life-changing information may have additional options that their care provider did not mention. For this, we need to be well informed patients. Consider alternative care, and bring it to your doctor's attention. There is nothing wrong with being informed and challenging your doctor. She makes a good point when she says that patient and doctors need to overcome resistance, resistance to work with other doctors, resistance to research alternative care as a patient. Doing this can create more accurate and personal diagnosis'.

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It seems to me that many of the problems in healthcare are not due to deliberate action/inaction or by a sense of malintent. Rather I think many problems - such as complex systems, high costs, and inefficiency often stem from a lack of education/ignorance and poor communication/misunderstandings. I suppose I tend to believe that these more passive and generally amoral issues are responsible for most of the problems we face (in and outside healthcare).
That said, it doesn’t mean we should do nothing. I like this emphasis on collaboration, whether it’s cross-disciplinary or between healthcare providers and patients. Obviously nobody has the mental capabilities or the time necessary to become an expert in everything, so clearly it’s necessary to collaborate (and of course we already do in many ways). But perhaps what could be focused on is optimizing how we collaborate.
This could come from increased awareness of who could best collaborate with who, and the benefits of doing so. Perhaps this could be integrated as an interprofessional education in the various fields where it could be useful. With this awareness, I like the idea of a shared vision. When people have a common goal and idea of how things could be improved, it seems that they’re much more likely to work together toward it.
Where poor communication is often such a significant problem, perhaps there should be additional or improved training on how to best communicate with other professionals. I know many programs exist to improve interprofessional collaboration but I wonder if there is data to support any of them being more successful than others and if so, if the most effective programs are being used.
The patient side is perhaps even more important. By making patients a more active participant in their healthcare, they are more likely to be motivated to comply with healthcare provider recommendations, especially those related to lifestyle. Patient collaboration, it seems, has the potential to improve the efficacy of preventative care and shifting healthcare from reactive to proactive, thus maximizing health rather than simply trying to treat disease.

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