Reconsidering Patient Centred Care: Between Autonomy and Abandonment

Winner of the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2023
In a major contribution to the sociology of medicine, Alison Pilnick shifts the terms of the debate around patient centred care (PCC). PCC is typically framed as a moral imperative, necessary to prevent a return to the outmoded medical paternalism of the past. However, empirical research repeatedly fails to show a clear link between the adoption of PCC and improvement in health outcomes. These results are largely considered as professional failings, to be remediated through ‘better’ training in PCC; as a result empirical research is largely focused on the extent to which practice does not live up to checklists of PCC criteria.
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