Clinicians’ and patients’ roles in patient involvement
- Professor of Applied Health Care Research, Institute of Clinical Education, Peninsula Medical School, St Luke’s Campus, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK; nicky.britten@pms.ac.uk
The development of valid indicators to assess the quality of care for mental health is a challenge for primary care organisations.
The involvement of patients in health care is now a matter of government policy, at least in the UK. Partly as a result of the scandal surrounding paediatric heart surgery in Bristol and the ensuing enquiry,1 public and patient involvement is now firmly on the agenda. To researchers who have been advocating patient centredness and shared decision making for years, if not decades, this is a welcome initiative. However, neither policy makers nor researchers have made much progress in working out how patient involvement is to be measured. Involvement can occur at many levels—from citizens’ juries to patient participation groups—but perhaps the most important arena for many …
