Beyond Diagnosis: Relating Person to Patient, Patient to Person

Human beings are patients-in-waiting, waiting for a diagnosis that will confirm their patienthood. As consumers of patient caring services we are all required to submit to its technologies and, in an uneasy alliance with professionals, forced to conform to an appropriately objectified patient identity. The authors in this collection, themselves service providers and users, question whether technology on its own can ever be a complete and effective response to illness. They suggest that health professionals may be increasingly challenged to effectively balance genuine therapeutic service relationships that meet the personal needs and serve the agency of patients with the sometimes alienating application of the essential technologies of therapy. This book proposes that patients and their helpers are first and foremost people. It challenges service practices that distance people from healthy professional interpersonal connections and supports the active preservation of human relating as a core driver of therapeutic care.