The patient empowerment concept, a recent outgrowth of the natural health movement, asserts that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives, not only in their personal behavior.

According to advocates of the natural health movement, the following are key tenets of patient empowerment:

• Patients cannot be forced to follow a lifestyle dictated by others.
• Preventive medicine requires patient empowerment for it to be effective.
• Patients as consumers have the right to make their own choices and the ability to act on them.

[edit] See also

• U.S. Patients' Bill of Rights
• Patient advocacy

[edit] External links

• Patient Empowerment at About.com Background knowledge about the American healthcare system needed to empower patients, including communications, patient safety, medical consumerism and current issues.
• Moynihan R, Smith R. Too much medicine? British Medical Journal. 2002 Apr 13; 324(7342): 859-60. PMID 11950716
• Patients Are Powerful - Patient Advocacy - nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to helping medical patients improve their overall managed healthcare by teaching them their rights and what it takes to negotiate HMOs.
• Patient Advocate Foundation a national non-profit organization that serves as an active liaison between the patient and their insurer, employer and/or creditors to resolve insurance, job retention and/or debt crisis matters relative to their diagnosis through case managers, doctors and attorneys. Patient Advocate Foundation seeks to safeguard patients through effective mediation assuring access to care, maintenance of employment and preservation of their financial stability.
• Every Patient's Advocate Articles to empower patients to partner with their physicians, by Trisha Torrey, Every Patient's Advocate
• National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives - State by State resources to help consumers complete their own psychiatric advance directive