RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 To Care Is to Coprovide
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 553
OP 555
DO 10.1370/afm.342
VO 3
IS 6
A1 Buetow, Stephen A.
YR 2005
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/3/6/553.abstract
AB Although primary care, including family medicine, recognizes different types of clinician-patient interaction, I argue that only interactions characterized by coprovision define care. By coprovision I mean that clinicians and patients each provide the expertise in health care that they have the capacity to contribute in any given situation. I argue that paternalism and consumerism cannot signify care in any real sense. Some implications of this analysis include a reconceptualization of family medicine and its defining attributes; support for features of caring relationships, such as mutual responsiveness and responsibility; and an acknowledgment that clinicians and patients need to be self-regarding as well as other-regarding. In a previous issue of the Annals, I called for a new dictionary for family medicine, one that would redefine attributes of family medicine in ways not exclusively clinician-centric. Specifically, it would acknowledge the role of patients and their informal caregivers as coproviding, not merely consuming, health care.