Health and Social Care Policy and the Interprofessional ... - CAIPE

diagnosis and treatment process is often desirable and sometimes
indispensable’ (p7).
Divided into six ‘rights’ categories (confidentiality and privacy, consent,
information, care & treatment, application) the WHO Declaration frequently
implicitly and occasionally explicitly refers to a patient’s right to expect that the
health professions will collaborate, co-operate and integrate in planning,
delivering and evaluating care.
Within the EU there are a number of health service configurations each of
which have evolved in response to the individual Member State policy
priorities. Each model has its advantages and is heralded by their owners as
‘better or even best’, in specific contexts, than other Member States. There
has been a much greater emphasis on improving health systems performance
in practice and education and training on a pan European basis within the
past few years however and evidence of this can be found at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_overview/health_forum/health_forum_en.
htm
Some Member States, as a result of European Court of Justice rulings, have
had to overhaul their health service provision radically but now are ‘beginning
to see the potential benefits from greater collaboration, in particular where
they face shortages of capacity or have identified concrete benefits for
cooperating across frontiers’.
The Lisbon European Council (2000) established the ‘Open Method of Coordination’
which ‘facilitates exchange of best practice and achieving greater
convergence in areas where harmonisation of legislation is not possible. It
involves agreeing broad goals, establishing indicators and benchmarks of
good practice, developing guidelines for policy, with targets to be achieved,
that can be adopted where possible, and establishing a system of monitoring
that is organised on the basis of mutual learning’.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_overview/health_forum/health_forum_en.
htm
Here then is concrete evidence that there is a wind of change sweeping
across Europe. Patients in every country are being actively encouraged to
take ownership of their health and self manage (or at the very least be an
equal partner) their care when unwell. All individual member states face the
same problems and challenges in that they have an ageing population, who
have increasing care needs, and a diminishing workforce to deliver the care
needed. A pan European model is emerging that focuses on patient and staff
mobility and transferability, with an emphasis on international collaboration,
co-operation and integration when planning, delivering and evaluating care.
EU policy
It is fascinating to note that one of the most comprehensive websites found on
EU policy relating to health and social care includes a large glossary which
does not include ‘patient’, user’, ‘client’, ‘carer’, ‘teamwork’, 'collaboration',
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