Debates in Values-Based Practice: Arguments For and Against

This came out whilst I’ve been away and so now I can have a quick skim read. Obviously I won’t find my own chapter terribly interesting. But the rest looks to be. Well done to Michael Loughlin for getting it together. The official blurb from the CUP website runs thus:

Demands on healthcare systems are increasingly complex and diverse. Consumerism, multiculturalism and regulation challenge practitioners and policymakers. This has led to urgent debate about the value and purpose of healthcare as people seek to make serious, well-thought through decisions. This book helps readers to make rational decisions about healthcare provision in the context of complex and diverse values. It offers no easy solutions, instead presenting a range of perspectives and arguments on values-based practice, an increasingly influential approach to managing value-conflicts/differences in medicine, psychiatry, health and social care. Readers must make their own minds up about the controversies, but this book will give them a sense of the scene and the ability to defend their own position with clarity and confidence. This is a valuable resource for health practitioners and managers, academics in health services research and policy and students of management, bioethics, applied philosophy and political and social theory.

“What a privilege to listen in to a civilised discussion between the originator of value based medicine, Bill Fulford, and those who seek to understand, to take it further, practically and philosophically, and to dissent. This book gives us all of that and the gracious response of Fulford to both friend and foe alike. It shows how such discussion can improve the practice of medicine and, by extension, inform approaches to global health. There is much here for philosopher and practitioner alike.” Sir Michael Marmot, Director, University College London Institute of Health Equity.

List of contributors
Editorial introduction Michael Loughlin
Part I. VBP: Values, Practice and Philosophy:
1. Values-based practice: the facts K. W. M. (Bill) Fulford
2. Values-based clinical reasoning Ed Peile
3. Liberating practice from philosophy – a critical examination of Values-Based Practice and its underpinnings Elselijn Kingma and Natalie Banner
4. Values-based practice and authoritarianism Tim Thornton
5. VBP: but which values? And whose? Bob Brecher
6. Reframing health care: philosophy for medicine and human flourishing Phil Hutchinson and Rupert Read
7. Values-based practice: a new tool or a new package? Mona Gupta
8. Values or virtues? Richard Hamilton
9. Values-Based Practice, competence and expertise Gideon Calder
10. Wishing to remain ill: an unacceptable value? Harry Lesser
11. VBP and global health Sridhar Venkatapuram
12. Is VBP useful in psychiatry? – A practitioner's view Alistair Stewart
13. Living with uncertainty: a first person plural response to eleven commentaries K. W. M. (Bill) Fulford
Part II. VBM and the Basis for Medical Decisions: Survival, Security and Flourishing:
14. Values, foundations and being human Miles Little
15. Eliciting axioms to enrich debates about the pharmaceutical industry Wendy Lipworth and Kathleen Montgomery
16. Using the survival-security-flourishing model to explain the emergence and shape of the medical profession Kathleen Montgomery and Wendy Lipworth
17. Does medicine need a base? A critique of modest foundationalism Ross E. G. Upshur
18. VBM and the challenge of person-centred medicine Andrew Miles
19. Values-based medicine, foundationalism and casuistry Mark R. Tonelli
20. Values-based medicine and patient autonomy Robyn Bluhm
21. Responses to contributions, suggestions and critiques Miles Little
Part III. Conclusions:
22. Walking the VB-talk: concluding reflections on models, methods and practical pay-offs K. W. M. (Bill) Fulford and Miles Little
Index.