Self-care as care left undone? The ethics of the self-care agenda in contemporary healthcare policy

Self-care, or self-management, is presented in healthcare policy as a precursor to patient empowerment and improved patient outcomes. Alternatively, critiques of the self-care agenda suggest that it represents an over-reliance on individual autonomy and responsibility, without adequate support, wher...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Greaney, Anna-Marie (Author) ; Flaherty, Sinead (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2020
In: Nursing philosophy
Year: 2020, Volume: 21, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-11
Further subjects:B Ethics
B covert rationing
B care left undone
B Self-management
B Self-care
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Summary:Self-care, or self-management, is presented in healthcare policy as a precursor to patient empowerment and improved patient outcomes. Alternatively, critiques of the self-care agenda suggest that it represents an over-reliance on individual autonomy and responsibility, without adequate support, whereby ‘self-care’ is potentially unachievable and becomes ‘care left undone’. In this sense, self-care contributes to a blame culture where ill-health is attributed to personal behaviours or lack thereof. Furthermore, self-care may represent a covert form of rationing, as the fiscal means to enable effective self-care and supplement, or replace, self-care capacities, is not provided. This paper explores these arguments through a contemporary ethical analysis of the self-care agenda. The terms self-care and self-management are used interchangeably throughout whereby self-management is understood as a point in the wider self-care continuum.
ISSN:1466-769X
Contains:Enthalten in: Nursing philosophy
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/nup.12291