The Patient in the Family

Patient in the Family examines the tensions between the two systems devoted to caring for people's deepest vulnerabilities, the health care system and the institution of the family and suggests how they could work better together.

---

The Patient in the Family diagnoses the ways in which the worlds of home and hospital misunderstand each other. The authors explore how medicine, through its new reproductive technologies, is altering the structure of families, how families can participate more fully in medical decision-making, and how to understand the impact on families when medical advances extend life but not vitality.