Breast cancer treatments often leave survivors feeling disconnected from their bodies, impacting their self-esteem and emotional wellbeing. TACTUS is an innovative sensory toolkit designed to foster reconnection and self-exploration using tactile tools, essential oils, and guided exercises. Feedback from patients and healthcare professionals led to a shift from a prescribed process to a personalized approach, allowing survivors to engage at their own pace. TACTUS is expected to bridge physical and emotional health, offering a holistic and empathetic proof-of-concept that promotes self-awareness and sexual health posttreatment. Future developments include refining the toolkit, exploring massage techniques to enhance recovery and prevent complications, and conducting a formal evaluation.

Breast cancer (BC) treatment often overlooks sexual health, focusing solely on survival indicators. The Explorar-me kit invites BC patients to reconnect with their sexuality through self-exploration tools and accessible education. Patient-centred design revealed cultural barriers and normalized discomforts, highlighting the need for proactive sexual health education. The kit’s tools, including a vibrator and dilators, would allow patients to explore their sexual wellbeing independently and confidently. This replicable model demonstrates how empathy-driven, collaborative design can address stigmatised health topics and improve patient experiences.

This article explores the redesign of the Wearable Artificial Kidney (WAK). The article aims to show how crucial a designer’s intervention can be even for medical purposes. It suggests how a renewed setting of the WAK’s components and the review of its usability can spark the transformation of a therapeutic method that has remained unchanged over many years, but is no longer sustainable, both in terms of resources and patients’ quality of life.

Patient disagreement and dissatisfaction with their healthcare providers may be reflective of ineffective communication during the doctor-patient interaction. Such disagreement and dissatisfaction has significant repercussions for the therapeutic relationship. We explore factors that may result in such inadequate communication. While acknowledging that gaps in communication may persist despite the best efforts of both the patient and the physician, we consider strategies to bridge these gaps.

This rapid literature review summarises evidence around best practice in the management of young people who present at health services with alcohol and other drugs (AOD) issues plus at least one comorbidity or chronic health need. The findings were used to develop and trial Formalised Case Management Guidelines that promote continuity of care for vulnerable youth accessing Primary Health Care services.

By 2030, nobody will accept poor results in health care. In most cases of chronic illness, people will benefit from becoming active partners in their own health care journey. Medical professionals will focus on communication skills to become trusted navigators rather than impersonal technicians. Patient advocates and multidisciplinary teams will be key sources of support in a borderless healthcare system. Patients and paymasters will drive these innovations. Doctors will recognise them as an opportunity to avoid burnout. There is room for optimism. The healthcare system has the potential to deliver better outcomes at a lower cost.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an area of public health impacting the livelihoods, safety, and health of each and every one of us. As everyday Americans volunteered to be first to receive placebo or novel therapeutics in the quest to end a global outbreak, suddenly we as a community were also informed of clinical trials, vaccine safety and development, and research design. As engagement spreads and the opportunity becomes ripe to build a community of researchers, patients, and clinicians and transform what has historically been termed “human subjects” in clinical research, we encourage this drive to strengthen the clinical research ecosystem with a primary focus on patient involvement in all phases of codeveloping clinical research design.

Supervising medical students to develop a research project can be challenging. Unless a student has prior experience in research, they may struggle to identify a research question that can be addressed by a novice researcher in a time-limited project. At the same time, when a project spans years of the degree, a student who has been offered an "off-the-shelf" idea may lose interest in the project and the assignment can become burdensome. We describe how a cohort of medical students were encouraged to focus their project ideas on a story of someone whose medical problem was of interest to them. Most students

The See it my way model is a free storytelling event for patients, carers and staff. The model allows people who are not normally heard to have a voice, while increasing staff empathy and helping them develop critical skills.

Patient shadowing is useful in evaluating the patient experience. Authors share insights from Improving Experience through Regular Shadowing Events (ImERSE), a patient shadowing program for medical students within a paediatric surgery daycase theatre.