The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health

Learn how to place communication and participation at the heart of evidence-based healthcare

The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health sits at the forefront of the challenging, changing 21st century landscape. The 'knowledgeable patient' as an individual can take many forms: patient, family carer, consumer advocate, or member of the public interested in health issues. In each of these roles, knowledgeable patients interact with health professionals by asking questions about the evidence for treatment, seeking support, exchanging views, and contributing experiences and new ideas on how to improve the health system.

Drawing from several research paradigms, The Knowledgeable Patient is an essential guide to a new era of complex healthcare. Integrating consumer stories and evidence from systematic reviews, it examines key communication and participation issues in a range of contexts, including:

• surgery
• safe medicine use
• chronic disease self management
• the complexity of multimorbidity
• notification of rare disease risk.

The Knowledgeable Patient is international in scope with researched examples spanning living in the community, health service treatment, governance, and policy making. It provides health professionals with new ideas, concepts, evidence, and practical tools to understand the central role of communication and participation to a well-functioning health system.   It is an ideal reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying the health sciences.

Watch a video about The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health from the author, Sophie Hill: bit.ly/xNYCqG

Sophie Hill, MA, PhD, Coordinating Editor, Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group, Head, Centre for Health Communication and Participation, Australian Institute for Primary Care and Ageing, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia