Improving Cancer Services Through Patient Involvement

Increasing patient centredness in outpatient care through closer collaboration with patient groups?

“…Based on this experience a second project started to develop equivalent criteria for the out-patient sector ("Self-help-friendly Medical Practices"). 1 Some general recommendations by the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (ASHIP) North Rhine and Westphalia-Lippe 2 [21] for the cooperation between physicians and patients/self-help groups on the one hand and the eight quality criteria for inpatient care on the other hand were the starting point for formulating criteria for outpatient care (GPs' and specialists' offices likewise) in a concerted action of all relevant players. These players were representatives of self-help groups, self-help supporters from self-help clearing houses 3 and health care professionals responsible for quality management.…”

“…Patient and user/public involvement are widely discussed as ways to improve the quality and responsiveness of health care services [1]. Corresponding key notions for enhancing the quality of health care systems are "patient participation" and "patient centredness" [2,3].…”

Involving self‐help groups in health‐care institutions: the patients’ contribution to and their view of ‘self‐help friendliness’ as an approach to implement quality criteria of sustainable co‐operation

“…Since then, many efforts have been made to generally acknowledge self‐help groups (SHG) or ‘voluntary and self‐help organizations’ as mentioned in the WHO's strategy ‘Health 2020’ . Despite many pleas to extend the role of self‐help, the debate continues on the potentials and problems of SHGs and their collaboration with health‐care professionals and researchers …”