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Imprint: Triarchy Press
Published: November 2014
Format: Paperback
List Price: £12.00
Extent: 152pp.
Size: 14 x 21.6 cm
ISBN: 978-1-909470-44-6

Humanising Healthcare: 
Patterns of Hope for a System Under Strain 
Margaret Hannah  - See more at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3sUR4g9TS0AJ:www.triarchypress.net/reviews---humanising-healthcare.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk#sthash.qfvbKjtb.dpuf
Humanising Healthcare: 
Patterns of Hope for a System Under Strain
Margaret Hannah

A practical strategy for transforming the UK and other healthcare systems... offering an affordable, sustainable and compassionate alternative to the present mess. 

Reviews

Jonathon Tomlinson  (@mellojonny):

"In Humanising Healthcare, Hannah says that we urgently need to ask what we understand, what matters and what we’re willing to do, not just with our patients but with our healthcare system. We need, as the other authors also argue, to get our values on the table. There will be consensus and dissensus, it won’t be easy, but we cannot go on as we are. It’s not just that we’re unlikely ever to be governed by politicians who will raise taxes to spend ever more on healthcare, but there are more fundamental problems with a healthcare system designed around diseases rather than people.

Prof. Trish Greenhalgh reckons that multi-morbidy will be Evidence Based Medicine’s nemesis, like weather forecasting, every new diagnosis and changing social context is a complexity multiplier. Now we live for years with heart, brain, lung, neurological etc. diseases that once would have killed us. Evidence based on single diseases becomes ever-less certain in the face of multi-morbidity. Multiple specialists, clinics and medications add up to an intolerable burden of care. We need specialists in people and relationship-based care, now more than ever.

Hannah explains how a system of healthcare based on shared values and meaningful relationships can be created by describing the development of the South Central Foundation (SCF) healthcare system in Alaska,

Realising that nothing short of a radical reform would both improve services and control costs, SCF … undertook a two-year community listening process to find out what the people really wanted from their health service and how they wanted to be treated. Then they delivered it.  

Few places in the world have the opportunity to start afresh, but evolving ourselves out of the mess we’re in is likely to result in more fire-fighting just to survive until the next financial year. Hannah describes a three horizons model of change. The first horizon is where we are at present and the third is where we would like to be. The second horizon is where these competing visions collide, a zone of numerous initiatives and innovations. Like conversations about values with patients, these collisions will be difficult, but we have to get our values on the table in order to have a vision about what kind of healthcare we want. And if it is healthy relationships and compassionate care that we want, then continuity of care, minimally disruptive medicine, values based practice, resisted medicalisation and patient involvement are a few of the things happening right now that we can carry forward.

Humanising Healthcare is a book that makes us think, ‘what does it mean to be healthy and what do we want from healthcare?’ It reminds us that medicine is only one of the ways to good health. What she thinks, and I agree, is that we need a healthcare system that supports healthy living and healthy relationships, one that calls on medicine only when it’s needed."
Read the full review at A Better NHS

Comments from Readers


  1. "I am reading 'Humanising Healthcare' and want to tell you how much your perception and understanding resonate with mine. I feel blessed having found your book and with it someone with your insights and practical approach.  I work in the NHS. It is my deep conviction that there is much unexpressed potential within people and communities which is the largest untapped resource in our health system. This is where I am choosing to focus my energy."                                  
  2. "You offer a compelling sense-making narrative and at the same time reinforce the deep sense of challenge I feel in much of my work. One of the most difficult things is that because the system spends so much of its time dealing with 'failure demand' it continues to create the illusion that further efficiency/productivity gains are not only possible but very evident. And thus - without examining the wider context - people carry on running around the hamster wheel thinking that if they run faster and tell themselves things will be different, then this will eventually work.  I think this is how 'hope' often works in the NHS."                                                   
  3. "The themes of the book resonate very powerfully with my/our thinking about the systemic nature of the problems in healthcare and the solutions."  ​