RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Clients or citizens? Some considerations for primary care organisations.
JF British Journal of General Practice
JO Br J Gen Pract
FD British Journal of General Practice
SP 716
OP 722
VO 53
IS 494
A1 Peter G Cawston
A1 Rosaline S Barbour
YR 2003
UL http://bjgp.org/content/53/494/716.abstract
AB Health services policy in the United Kingdom has given prominence to patient and public participation within a 'modernization' agenda. The superficial consensus in support of lay participation masks a conflicting array of ideologies and theoretical perspectives that colour how this is interpreted. Both client-oriented perspectives and citizenship-oriented approaches are limited by the dynamics of power relationships and decision-making processes within National Health Service structures. Primary care organisations offer the possibility of developing structures for providing closer collaboration between citizens and services. In order to achieve this, however, vague processes of client representation need to be replaced by robust community-based participatory action research models.