This book sets out a philosophical basis for person-centred healthcare, primarily using work by Heidegger and Gadamer, but drawing on ideas derived from Aristotle and process philosophy, in order to show how practice can be improved and how examples of person-centred practice can be transferred between individuals and institutions involved in the commissioning and provision of healthcare. By providing an underlying architectonic, this work will help to enable practitioners to understand the benefits of person-centred healthcare practice in promoting autonomy in those who are suffering from chronic and other illnesses. The text takes a phenomenological approach to healthcare because it offers a rich and subtle way of thinking about how we know what we know, and this applies to our knowledge and understanding of how healthcare works just as much as it does to all other kinds of knowledge. For those in clinical practice, this book provides a guide to the thinking behind person-centred healthcare.
