Patient-Perspective Care

Inappropriate health care is an escalating and expensive problem. It affects high income, middle income, and low income countries and wastes billions of dollars annually as well as harming individuals and communities. Inappropriate care refers to both the overuse and underuse of tests and treatments and, ironically, can occur concurrently within the same health system. Even though patient-centred care is still the prevailing ethos, specifying where patients should be situated geographically has not required health professionals to consider the preferences, values, and priorities of patients when making treatment decisions. Patient-perspective care demands that the decisions health professionals make are in the service of patient's goals. Health care, ultimately, is helping individuals to live the lives they would wish for themselves. In order to meet this imperative, health professionals must work towards understanding what their patients would like to achieve through their engagement with health services. This book details the extent and scope of inappropriate care and how we have arrived in this position. The necessity for patient-perspective care is outlined and provides a theoretical framework that explains why patient-perspective care is so critical. The implications of this theory are then explored and specific strategies for moving towards a patient-perspective approach are discussed. This book is entirely original and describes a novel, fresh approach to delivering health services. Many long-standing and expensive problems such as missed appointments will disappear and patients will be more satisfied with the treatments they receive. Health services generally will be more efficient and effective leading to more sustainable and affordable health care.

Timothy A. Carey is the director of Flinders University's Centre for Remote Health. He is a clinician, teacher, and researcher who has developed the Method of Levels, an a-diagnostic, personalised psychotherapy which is described in the book Principles-Based Counselling and Psychotherapy: A Method of Levels Approach (Routledge 2015).

Chapter 1. Our Global Health Crisis Chapter 2. How Have We Arrived at this Position? Chapter 3. Why Has the Concept of Patient-Centred Care Failed? Chapter 4. The Importance of the Patient's Perspective Chapter 5. The Theoretical Underpinnings of Patient-Perspective Care Chapter 6. What Patient-Perspective Care Means in Practice Chapter 7. Patient-Led Appointment Scheduling: a practical example of patient-perspective care Chapter 8. Patients' Perspectives Chapter 9. Where To From Here?