ABSTRACT
Providing patient-centred care requires a significant change in the skills and mindset of the provider; it is not so much the ‘system of care’ that needs to change, but the behaviour of the provider that must change. This chapter begins by detailing how the current model of health care is ill suited to managing the complexities of chronic disease, with new models of care being proposed. These new models all share one core requisite – the provision of patient-centred clinical medicine. Patient-centred clinical medicine is a formal theoretical framework that recognises the uniqueness of an individual’s disease, their life’s commitments and leisure activities, as well as the uniqueness of their personal experience of the disease due to culture, beliefs and previous experience with the disease. To provide patient-centred care, several clinical requisites must be met within every patient–provider interaction. Each requisite is reviewed in detail, emphasising the need for providers to shift their behaviour to achieve the necessary reversal in patient–provider roles; the provider must regard the patient as the expert when selecting a diabetes management regime, while the provider takes on the role of an educator whose goal is to ensure the patient is well informed. Clinical cases are used to reinforce concepts being presented.
