Patient-Centered Prescribing : Seeking Concordance in Practice

Series Editors: Moira Stewart, Judith Belle Brown and Thomas R Freeman Half of all prescribed medicines are used in a sub-optimal manner and clinicians struggle to find ways of improving the situation. There is a move towards greater partnership with patients, but concordance (shared decision making between patients and healthcare professionals) is a growing challenge for the profession. This practical book offers numerous real life case studies to demonstrate the way the patient-centered model, combined with other behavioural models, can result in a logical approach to prescribing for difficult clients, including 'non-compliant' and other challenging patients. Patient-Centered Prescribing fully considers the very complex nature of the issues at hand, ethical questions, time restrictions and financial matters, to produce a realistic analysis of the difficulties to be overcome in achieving better practice. This book is ideal for doctors, nurses and pharmacists, and postgraduate students of medicine, pharmacy and nursing. It is also of great interest to medical educators, particularly those teaching primary care and communication skills, and to everyone involved in developing doctor-patient partnerships.