#43 Patient-focused care and practitioner education with Bateman Horne Center’s, Tahlia Ruschioni

Putting patients at the heart of chronic illness care and research, while educating practitioners to build proven pathways and positive outcomes for those with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), Long Covid, Fibromyalgia, EDS (Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) and related conditions.

Tahlia Ruschioni is Executive Director at the Bateman Horne Center (BHC), a relatively small center with an incredibly powerful reach. Through its Medical Education Resource Center (MERC), BHC has reached over 13,000 healthcare professionals across all 50 U.S. states and 90 countries. Tahlia also led the development of BHC’s Clinical Care Guide, a practical framework for treating ME/CFS, Long COVID, dysautonomia and mast cell activation that patients can take to their own clinicians.

In this episode we discuss:

- How Tahlia’s family’s experience of ME/CFS led her to BHC

- Why BHC trains every provider to meet patients with respect, curiosity and time

- BHC’s multimodal approach to medical education

- Writing ME/CFS standards of care into medical licensing

- How Long COVID has opened doors for ME/CFS research

- The importance of consistent definitions for post-exertional malaise (PEM)

- Why funding and care must support the whole patient

BHC’s work with the Federation of State Medical Boards has the potential to change medical education for ME/CFS and Long COVID at a systems level. To support their work, donate at: https://batemanhornecenter.org/donate/