The Patient Empowerment Paradox - Lyme Disease Rhetoric and Contested Health Literacies

by Sarah Ann Singer

Lyme disease serves as an entry point to investigate the complex rhetorical problem of patient empowerment. Patients are more involved than ever in their healthcare system. Whether they are researching their medications, advocating for certain treatments, or tracking their biometrics, when patients are empowered, they gain health literacy and other critical skills that can help them successfully navigate the U.S. healthcare system. Yet, this practice relies on the assumption that patients are able to be empowered. In The Patient Empowerment Paradox, Sarah Singer argues that chronic Lyme disease uniquely reveals how the problem of patient empowerment is rhetorical rather than scientific. Patients with chronic and contested illnesses are trapped in what she terms the "patient empowerment paradox," when widely accepted rhetorical moves-ones often considered empowering-become gridlocked and competing channels of information disempower and harm patients seeking medical relief. Chronic Lyme has created a communication crisis that harms providers and patients alike. As such, this book reveals how the rhetoric of these debates overwhelms patients with information, forces them to make impossible choices, and ultimately slows or prevents their recovery. The Patient Empowerment Paradox offers a needed analysis of how patients take matters into their own hands when medicine fails to give them answers, and it shows how elusive empowerment can really be-despite the rhetoric touting its benefits. The arguments in this book and the concept of the patient empowerment paradox can be extended to other chronic and contested illnesses, such as long COVID"-- Provided by publisher.

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