University Of Nottingham expert studies sidelining of medical expertise in patient-centred care in new shortlisted book
A Nottingham academic has been shortlisted for a number of awards following the publication of her book outlining the issues surrounding patient-centered care.
Professor Alison Pilnick explores the relationship between patient-centred care [PCC] and medical expertise, and examines the outcome PCC has had through unintentionally sidelining this expertise in the book, entitled ‘Reconsidering Patient Centred Care: Between Autonomy and Abandonment.’
The adoption of PCC in healthcare settings, she explains, fails to deliver any consistent improvement in health outcomes, raising questions surrounding the assumed need for more training in PCC.
The book goes on to examine how, through attempts to practice PCC, patients can feel abandoned and forced to make decisions they do not feel qualified to make.
Alison Pilnick, Professor of Language, Medicine and Society, explained: “The book is the culmination of 30 years of research aimed at improving communication between healthcare professionals and their patients or clients, in a wide range of healthcare settings.
Alison Pilnick photo resize
Patient Centred Care is a policy that makes intuitive and moral sense, but examining the difficulties that practitioners and patients encounter when they try to enact it shows the importance of grounding policy initiatives in an understanding of how healthcare interaction actually works in practice rather than in abstract values.”
Professor Alison Pilnick, Professor of Language, Medicine and Society
After publication in August 2022, the book has now been nominated and shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness book prize and the American Sociological Association Donald Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology.
Alison added: “I’m thrilled the book has been nominated and shortlisted for these awards, as it shows the value sociological analyses can bring to understanding and improving healthcare practice.”