Healthcare and Trust

Healthcare has suffered from a series of scandals where trust and patient confidence has been questioned. This timely book examines recent case studies involving every aspect of healthcare provision including the Shipman and Alder Hey cases. It shows how positive lessons can be learnt from these experiences to improve health and healthcare.

The contributors offer practical advice based on their extensive and broad experience on how to regain trust between patient and practitioner following these difficulties. They demonstrate how doctors and other healthcare professionals can introduce ways to reduce error and mistrust and describe how to work better with press, the public, and patients.

It is essential reading for all healthcare professionals, policy makers, shapers, and commentators, and those representing patient groups. The context of this volume is clear - the Bristol paediatric cardiac surgery debacle, the Alder Hey scandal around retention and use of dead children’s organs without consent, and the Harold Shipman murders, largely of elderly women in their own homes by their own GP. No surprise then that a first analysis suggests a breakdown of trust. But what the various authors argue for in this volume is both a more careful commentary and a series of complex responses.

Real change is gradual, a response to a narrative rather than to a single shock to the system. Professional leadership, cross-disciplinary working with patients and the public, is what will rebuild trust—trust based on honesty, on listening, and on a strong sense of shared values. But it is possible and desirable. The authors have hit on what is "essentially the 'way through this'"!
Julia Neuberger in the Foreword