Essential Values-Based Practice
Clinical Stories Linking Science with People

Helps clinicians acquire and develop the processes and skills of values-based practice, improving outcomes for patients, carers and clinicians.

K. W. M. Fulford (Author), Ed Peile (Author), Heidi Carroll (Author)

9780521530255, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 March 2012

232 pages, 43 b/w illus.
24.6 x 18.9 x 1.1 cm, 0.5 kg

'… truly brilliant … The coherence with which the authors unpick complex and usually intangible, as well as explicit, situations is extraordinary … I was fascinated by the different scenarios, which echoed some of my own experiences with patients and made the text come alive and easy to read … This book is a hugely welcome clarion call back to the essential values in medicine … a very impressive book …' Julia Samuel, Founder Patron and Trustee, The Child Bereavement Charity, from the Foreword

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.

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.

Subject Areas: General practice [MBPC], Health systems & services [MBP]