Involving patients in the provision of community care: a change in philosophy

The National Health Service (NHS) has many different kinds of professionals and managers working underneath its large umbrella: non-clinical managers administer the work of health-care professionals, who in turn are concerned with the management of patients' treatments. Delivery of health-care services involves the managers and professionals working together to achieve a service that is good for, and acceptable to, patients. A change in the philosophy of the NHS is indicated by the growing acceptance, by both managers and professionals, of the necessity to elicit the views of patients (i.e. the expectations and perceptions of service users) and to incorporate these views into the planning and implementation of services. Discusses one such attempt to elicit the perceptions of service users, and reports on the preliminary findings of a patient-centred audit which has been undertaken in Southend Community Care Services NHS Trust. Discusses the effects that the audit has had on the chiropody services in Southend, for both non-clinical managers and health-care professionals, in order to highlight the usefulness of the approach.