Royal Institute of Philosophy Stapledon Colloquium 2020-21
Prof Leah McClimans, Univ. of South Carolina
Title and Abstract TBC
3 December 2020 - 3-5 pm
Patient-Centered Measurement
Patient-centered measurement is the idea that patient perspectives on should play an evidentiary role in determining how effective a drug is taken to be, the degree to which a hospital provides good quality or whether a particular intervention should be funded by an insurer. This idea may sound prosaic, but in fact it’s nothing short of revolutionary. Patient-centered measurement treats patient perspectives on par with more traditional metrics such as mortality, morbidity and safety. It says, patient views matter—not as an afterthought, and not only at the bedside, but in the nuts and bolts of creating our evidence base, and thus in macro-level health-care decision-making.
The America Food and Drug Administration as well as the UK’s Department of Health have been particularly active in developing patient-centered measurement. In this talk I’ll explore some of this activity and discuss philosophical responses to it. For the most part, philosophers have been critical of patient-centered measures—perhaps even a little cynical about their revolutionary role. We’ve have also tended (wrongly I believe) to think of these instruments as measures of well-being. In this talk, I’m going to argue that the point of these measures is to “capture patient voices”, not measure well-being. The upshot of this shift is that patient-centered measures require an epistemic theory rather than a prudential one. Once we make this shift, a whole new set of problems arise (!) but at least we can start being less cynical about the intent of these instruments.
A Zoom link will be circulated shortly.
The Stapledon Seminar Series features external speakers and members of the Liverpool department of Philosophy presenting current philosophical research. The seminars are free and all are welcome to attend. The seminar takes place on Thursdays, 3-5pm.
Read about Olaf Stapledon here.
