Goal planning, needs assessment & advocacy

The White Paper, Health of the Nation, and the Patients' Charter both seek to emphasise the importance of fully involving and informing patients about the treatment they receive. Much work on implementation of these documents has concentrated on achieving specific targets which, although essential, ignore the key managerial theme of changing behaviour, approach and attitudes in the staff/patient relationship and ensuring that patients are empowered through this relationship. Paul Kennedy and Nigel Pearce suggest that carefully planned and managed change through the use of a comparatively simple and well established approach has a major impact on the achievement of these initiatives.