The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health

Learn how to place communication and participation at the heart of evidence-based healthcare
The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health sits at the forefront of the challenging, changing 21st century landscape. The 'knowledgeable patient' as an individual can take many forms: patient, family carer, consumer advocate, or member of the public interested in health issues. In each of these roles, knowledgeable patients interact with health professionals by asking questions about the evidence for treatment, seeking support, exchanging views, and contributing experiences and new ideas on how to improve the health system.

Drawing from several research paradigms, The Knowledgeable Patient is an essential guide to a new era of complex healthcare. Integrating consumer stories and evidence from systematic reviews, it examines key communication and participation issues in a range of contexts, including:

surgery
safe medicine use
chronic disease self management
the complexity of multimorbidity
notification of rare disease risk.
The Knowledgeable Patient is international in scope with researched examples spanning living in the community, health service treatment, governance, and policy making. It provides health professionals with new ideas, concepts, evidence, and practical tools to understand the central role of communication and participation to a well-functioning health system. It is an ideal reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying the health sciences.