On Wednesday November 19, 2008 I was one of the guest speakers at the 9th Annual Symposium on Research and Quality of Care for St. Mary's Hospital in Montreal which took place at The Ruby Foo's hotel. Present were about 120 medical professionals from St. Mary's Hospital and from other hospitals in Montreal. I was asked to speak about the patient's perspective. I only had 30 minutes to speak and answer questions so I had to keep it short.

I started by showing 3 chapters from The 80/20 Project DVD:

Chapter 4 Building a support network
Chapter 8 Learning from relapses
Chapter 19 My employer and my illness

The following were the points I tried to make:

1) Treat me as a human being, it's not just medication that I need

2) In Chapter 19 “Dave” refuses a promotion in order to gain something else later, medical professionals need to help me with that

3) The importance of community organizations and how they helped me

4) People have to organize their lives in order to be and stay stable and that has nothing to do with medication

5) Medical teams don't always take time to help patients with organizing their lives

6) Take time to focus on other aspects of a patient's life

7) Educate medical staff on other aspects of patient not just the medical aspects

8) For me, Medication is 20% everything else is 80% and medical professionals can help me with this 80%

9) In order to stay well, I need the 80/20 but I need help from medical professionals to apply it

10) Everyone around me helped me apply the 80/20

11) I am aware of your reality (as medical professionals). The interventions you do with people you see in crisis, medication is often more important than when they are stable. Once they are stable and you see them as out patients, this is when the 80/20 applies.

Once again, thank you St. Mary's Hospital and to the organizing committee of the 9th Annual Symposium on Research and Quality of Care for giving me this opportunity.

Mike Santoro