ABSTRACT
The theoretical and empirical grounds for thinking of potential patients, patients and their unpaid carers as health workers were laid out in Chapter 1, pages 4-7. This chapter will look at the roles which each of these categories of health workers plays, is expected or is permitted to play. It will also look at the relations between them and the paid health workers. We noted in Chapter 11 a small but not insignificant minority of people who have consulted non-biomedical healers of various kinds, either as well as or instead of practitioners on the Medical Register. In the same period there have been two other developments: first, a great deal of official encouragement to people to look after their own health and, in the case of minor acute illness, to treat themselves in the first instance at least; second, reliance on unpaid carers has increased. Policies of decarceration, i.e. the return of long-stay patients to the ‘community’, and of shorter hospital stays for acute episodes have led to a greater reliance on unpaid carers; so has the increasing use of volunteers both in hospitals and to help care for the ailing in their own homes.
