Thoughtful Health Care
Ethical Awareness and Reflective Practice
- David Seedhouse - Aston University, UK
Thoughtful Health Care offers a timely antidote to a Health Care climate dominated by endless rules, regulations, mission statements and codes of practice.
David Seedhouse explains how simplistic labelling, mindless targets and empty slogans have created a delusion of control and efficiency, obscuring actual patient and carer realities. Using thought-provoking examples from health care and beyond, the book advocates the restoration of thoughtfulness, creativity, and independence in health work.
By reading this book, students and practitioners alike will be aided in developing their decision making and critical thinking skills, and ultimately serve those in their care better and with more honesty. The book ends with a powerful and practical toolkit that can be used thoughtfully and effectively by every open-minded health worker.
Thoughtful Health Care is for any health worker committed to caring with ethical awareness and practical sensitivity.
'Though my discipline is not healthcare but risk management, the writings of David Seedhouse have enlightened my thinking and influenced my worldview in invaluable ways. A practical approach underpinned by a coherent philosophy is what we need, and David delivers yet again in this latest work.'
'David Seedhouse has produced a strikingly honest view of where health policy makers have gone wrong but more importantly suggests an approach and ways healthcare professionals of the future can improve the quality of care for patients This is an interesting book that I was keen to read and didn’t disappoint. David Seedhouse provides some challenging ideas that will make readers reflect on and question their assumptions.
This is a must purchase book for undergraduate nurses.
As a trainee nurse in the optimistic 90s we were encouraged to challenge practice and question ideas. In the decades that followed we were then told to blindly follow targets regardless of the reasons for them. Currently the NHS is in crisis and badly needs leaders. David Seedhouse’s excellent book reignites that spirit of curiosity and sets the challenge for healthcare practitioners to really look at what is health and how in moving forward do we best provide a services that delivers the best healthcare.'
'David Seedhouse is a well-known and respected author in this field and in this book delivers a corrective to the current well-meaning but erroneous views on such things as values based recruitment and the 6Cs. Any health care worker thinking critically and wanting to articulate why certain practices and values are not up to the mark would do very well in reading this. The writing style is very accessible without dumbing down. Key ideas are illustrated and examined through very appropriate case studies and think stops. This should be core reading in any nursing programme.'
'An excellent book from a trusted author. This is a really useful source of information for nurses and student nurses which encourages much discussion and debate. The writing style is engaging and the reader certainly engages in the thought provoking toolkit and practical examples.'
‘This critically insightful and seriously thought provoking text challenges readers to critically reflect upon and carefully consider ‘the values delusion’ within contemporary health care settings. Pulling no punches, Seedhouse presents a refreshing and sometimes scathing attack on some of the superficial ways in which ‘values’ are viewed across many sectors.’
‘This thought provoking book contests the ideas of values and ethical awareness that are inherent in health and social care settings today. The reader is encouraged to reflect on established perspectives and reframe views. It is very accessible and broad in its appeal. I would recommend to all health and social care professionals.’
'When every organisation – from the NHS to CocaCola – has its list of platitudinous 'core values', on which all its practices are allegedly 'based', Seedhouse's penetrating scepticism is not only refreshing but urgently needed. This book is wilfully contentious – for the most part legitimately so. Seedhouse cares less about convincing us he is right on any given issue, much more about encouraging the genuine, critical thinking and practice that organisations agree, in principle, we need, but which so many of their structures inhibit.'
I have really enjoyed reading this book and found it to include lots of helpful information for my learners
Perfect book for a health care ethics course. It is engaging and descriptive. I would highly suggest taking a look at this one.
A book I shall definitely be recommending as a key text for a new module I shall be teaching next year on Ethical Issues in the Health and Social Care workplace. This will be very popular among students.
