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

How chronic Lyme sheds new light on the rhetorical problem of patient empowerment

Modern medicine asks patients to be informed and empowered partners in their own care. However, when this care system fails to provide answers, many individuals with chronic and contested illnesses use these same skills of research and advocacy to take matters into their own hands. They seek treatment from providers who confirm their self-diagnoses while touting cures of variable safety and efficacy. Sarah Ann Singer terms this dynamic the patient empowerment paradox.

In The Patient Empowerment Paradox, Singer analyzes published narratives, interviews, healthcare provider websites, and a patient data bank, as well as her own experience as a patient, to reveal how individuals become entangled in medical debates, misinformation, and decision fatigue. For Lyme researchers and scholars of other chronic and contested illnesses, she provides a framework to better understand the rhetoric of medical uncertainty and pave the way for improved patient outcomes.

Sarah Ann Singer is associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida. She has published articles in journals, including College English and Rhetoric of Health and Medicine.