Patrick Conlon

Patrick Conlon is an award-winning journalist and author based in Toronto. For ten years, he was the host of CBC Newsworld's popular On the Line with Patrick Conlon.

In late 2002, Jim, his longtime partner, suddenly contracted acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a devastating illness that resulted in a 15-week hospital stay, including more than eight weeks in two different intensive care units. Patrick successfully negotiated a role on his partner's medical care team, and remained active at bedside throughout Jim's hospital stay. Unlike many family members who often feel helpless and marginalized in a medical crisis, Patrick participated fully in his partner's care and was credited by hospital staff with playing a significant role in Jim's recovery. After Jim's discharge in April 2003, both men looked back on a hospital experience that had been basically positive and began responding to invitations from hospitals that expressed interest in hearing their uncommon story.

Through a succession of widely-read Toronto Star columns, Patrick has since enlisted significant public interest in a care model that is somewhat outside the traditional frame - that treats families as potentially-useful allies in recovery. He has met with hospital leaders and senior health professionals as well as influential politicians all over North America to advocate an initiative that essentially helps rewrite the customary them/us healthcare paradigm. He has also won the support of the Ontario Hospital Association and that major organization was responsible for hosting Canada's first cross-discipline conference on patient/family centred care in 2006, with Patrick as a planning committee member and both men as keynote speakers.

In March 2005, Patrick and Jim were invited to be the first community members of Mount Sinai Hospital's influential Adult Critical Care Team, the multi-disciplinary group responsible for setting ICU policy and practice, and their involvement with the team continues. Individually and together, they continue to address international hospital groups and conferences, and both were keynote speakers at the annual Picker International Symposium in Washington in August 2006. Both were also selected for the annual Medallion Lecture at Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in May 2007 and Patrick was a keynote speaker at June 2007's second annual OHA conference on patient/family centred care. He was also invited by Toronto Rehabilitation Institute to deliver 2008's annual Samuel & Sonia Schneiderman Lecture, and was a keynote speaker and McMaster University's Clinical Ethics Summer Institute in July 2009.

Patrick is the author of No Need to Trouble the Heart, published in April 2006 by Raincoast Books and released in the US in May 2007. That's the harrowing personal story of the couple's journey through Jim's medical crisis. He has since written The Essential Hospital Handbook: How to be an Effective Partner in a Loved One's Care, a unique resource for families of adult patients in community hospitals, and it was published worldwide by Yale University Press in July 2009.