Person-centred Health Care – Balancing the Welfare of Clinicians and Patients – Routledge

Person-centred health care is increasingly endorsed as a key element of high-quality care, yet, in practice, it often means patient-centred health care.This book scrutinizes the principle of primacy of patient welfare, which, although deeply embedded in health professionalism, is long overdue for critical analysis and debate.It appears incontestable because patients have greater immediate health needs than clinicians and the patient-clinician encounter is often recognized as a moral enterprise as well as a service contract.However, Buetow argues that the implication that clinician welfare is secondary can harm clinicians, patients and health system performance. Revaluing participants in health care as moral equals, this book advocates an ethic of virtue to respect the clinician as a whole person whose self-care and care from patients can benefit both parties, because their moral interests intertwine and warrant equal consideration.It then considers how to move from values including mor