Who Cares?

Australia's best-known nursing leader argues that our health system is failing the very people it is meant to serve: patients.

The story of modern medicine is one of miraculous new lifesaving techniques, sophisticated drugs and health professionals with increasingly specialised skills. Yet patients still feel frightened and vulnerable, and mistakes occur far too frequently-with tragic consequences.

Drawing on a lifetime of work in health care, Judy Lumby argues that the system continues to serve those who work in it rather than the people it is intended to care for. Despite the rhetoric of consumer choice, patients' experiences and concerns are routinely ignored in diagnosis and treatment. Despite the impact of the women's movement, hospitals remain rigidly hierarchical while the primary carers, nurses, are still excluded from decision-making.

Judy Lumby writes from a patient's perspective. From interviews, anecdotes and observations, she paints a vivid picture of what it is like to be sick in an ailing and changing health care system. She looks at patients' experiences today, and compares them with the situation three decades ago, when she first started her nursing training.

Who Cares? is compelling reading for anyone involved in the health care system: nurses, doctors, administrators and, of course, patients themselves.