Main description:

This book will help clinicians acquire and develop the processes and skills of values-based practice. The aim of most patient-clinician consultations is to improve health outcomes. Often they succeed, and patients are satisfied and empowered. However, some consultations are unsatisfactory and result in failure to improve health outcomes and dissatisfaction on the part of patients, carers or clinicians. When consultations fail to achieve the desired results, the cause is not usually a failure of evidence-based practice. Today's clinicians are trained in evidence-based medicine, educated, updated and appraised. The most likely reason why things go wrong is a failure of values-based practice - not ascertaining the relevant values perspectives and acting on them in a coherent and purposeful manner. If you rehearse and practise the elements of values-based practice detailed in this book, you will find your consultations more personally rewarding and your patients are likely to derive more benefit.

Contents:

Preface; Foreword; A bold claim to start this book; Prologue: linking science with people; Part I. Values, Individuals and an Overview of Values-based Practice: Introduction to Part I; 1. 'It's my back, Doctor!' (Episode 1): values in clinical decision making; 2. 'It's my back, Doctor!' (Episode 2): applying the tools already in the clinical toolbox for working with values to individuals; 3. An outline of values-based practice: its point, premise and ten-part process; Part II. The Clinical Skills for Values-based Practice: Introduction to Part II; 4. Recovery in schizophrenia: a values wake-up call; 5. Teenage acne: widening our values horizons; 6. A smoking enigma: getting (and not getting) the knowledge; 7. Diabetic control and controllers: nothing without communication; Part III. Relationships in Values-based Practice: Introduction to Part III; 8. 'Best' in breast cancer: clinician values and person-centred care; 9. Risks in safeguarding children: team values as well as skills; Part IV. Science and Values-based Practice: Introduction to Part IV; 10. The reluctant hypertensive: think evidence, think values too!; 11. Unexplainable abdominal pain: think values, think evidence too!; 12. Elective fertility: think high-tech, think evidence and values!; Part V. Bringing It All Together: Introduction to Part V; 13. A good (enough) death: dissensus in end of life care; 14. 'It's my back, Doctor!' (Episode 3): building a shared framework for values-based practice; Postscript: the small change of care; A bold claim to end this book; Appendix A. Values-based practice summary and definition of key terms; Appendix B. Values-based practice teaching framework; Index.