Presented by

Dr. Alan S. Weber

Communicating with the Community: A Successful Model for Peer-to-Peer Patient Education in Qatar

Alan S. Weber

Weill Cornell Medicine - Qatar

alw2010@qatar-med.cornell.edu

This contribution presents a case study of a successful peer-to-peer narrative medicine cancer survivor education project developed by the Qatar Cancer Society (QCS) and Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar. The project, the first of its kind in Qatar, involved medical students writing the stories of persons living with cancer in collaboration with the patients and then publishing them in a booklet which is distributed throughout Qatar to schools and patient support groups. Peer education has been proven to be a successful means of communicating to patients the health knowledge that sometimes is omitted during hospital stays and the clinical encounter. Health practitioners inform patients about their condition, diagnosis and prognosis, and instructions for follow-up care primarily through face-to-face discussions, informational pamphlets, or on-site dedicated educators such as nurses or patient educators. However, due to the decreasing time spent in the clinical encounter, important information relating to the social, economic, and psychological dimensions of the illness experience, as well as intra-family dynamics, cannot be successfully conveyed in short medical encounters. Additionally, the experience of the same disease can vary dramatically from patient to patient, necessitating a thorough understanding of the individual patient by the practitioner, a knowledge that can only be fostered by repeated visits and continuity in the therapeutic relationship. Many factors in modern medicine are interfering in the development of these long term patient-provider relationships. Patients themselves can therefore become a key additional resource for educating other patients about the lived experience of a specific disease or condition, especially within specific cultural and social settings. Anecdotal evidence collected by the author and QCS educators indicates that the story book has increased knowledge of the human dimensions of cancer and stimulated public discussions about a previously taboo topic in the State of Qatar. A mixed-methods research study related to this project reported that medical students who participated in the story book writing (n=9) enhanced their knowledge about cancer care, the patient perspective on disease, and the experiences of patients outside the clinic. 80.0% of the medical students strongly agreed (5-point Likert scale, strongly agree to strongly disagree) that service learning projects of this nature should be incorporated into medical education. 60.0% of students agreed, and 20.0% strongly agreed, that the experience changed how they currently interact with patients.