english.prescrire.org > Spotlight > Archives : 2014 > French non-profit journal Prescrire devotes its special summer edition to the theme "Preparing for the future, in the name of better healthcare"

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French non-profit journal Prescrire devotes its special summer edition to the theme "Preparing for the future, in the name of better healthcare"

The biennial "Prescrire Encounters" organised by non-profit French medical journal Prescrire were held on 23 and 24 May 2014 at the Bichat medical school in Paris. "Preparing for the future, in the name of better healthcare", the theme of this year’s Encounters, is also the theme of Prescrire’s summer special issue, dated August 2014. 

The Prescrire Encounters were the setting for exchanges between healthcare professionals and patients (there were over 300 participants), about learning to listen to one another and sharing decision-making.

The Prescrire Encounters were also an opportunity to exchange ideas for decreasing the medicalisation of everyday life, through better prescribing and even "deprescribing" certain drugs. To critically examine the benefits and limitations of new healthcare technologies. To get to know one another better, to foster better communications between healthcare professionals, social workers, patients’ representatives and users of the healthcare system. To identify the influences that divert away from patients’ best interests. To discuss proposals for improving the benefits that patients derive from care and to study new models of healthcare organisation.

The Prescrire Encounters were also the opportunity to hear from people who suffer from chronic diseases and who have chosen to donate their time to accompany other patients, to help to define treatment goals, and to help healthcare professionals better take into account the day-to-day limitations imposed by the disease.  Some of these patients become a part of healthcare teams, in hospitals and occasionally in the community.

A large and varied collection of posters (in French) was presented at the Prescrire Encounters, all available for free download online HERE

©Prescrire 1 August 2014

Source: "Préparer l'avenir pour mieux soigner" Rev Prescrire 2014 ; 34 (370).
Read the table of contents of
the special issue of French
medical journal Prescrire
Free (in French)

View the programme,
the videos and the posters from
the 2014 Prescrire Encounters
Free (in French)