Autonomous, Responsible, Alone

“Empowered” patients create advantages for themselves and communities by
monitoring their own needs and reducing loads on overstretched resources. But the
patient-consumer can be seen as isolated and overly responsible for choices about
their care. This volume reflects on isolation and relationships in health care, including
relationships between patients and their peers or families as well as those they have with
clinicians. It is developed from selected papers presented at the 9th Global Conference
on Making Sense of Health, Illness, and Disease, Oxford (UK), September 2010,
representing qualitative and quantitative studies from Europe, the United Kingdom,
Mexico and Australia. Contributing authors explore implications of their research for
problems related to individualisation and relationships within health care. They reveal
situations in which the absence of relational links led to misunderstandings; describe
relationships informing peoples’ understandings of illness; and present attempts to reimagine relationships between patients and practitioners.