Abstract:

Much is made of what to call those of us actively engaged in pursuing and receiving medical care from health professionals and this article does intend to settle that issue. There continues to be debate among the various health-care professionals as to what they think is the appropriate term to use, patient or consumer. In looking at the literature, doctors prefer to use the term “‘patient” and allied health professionals prefer to use the term “client”. It has also been found that there are differences of opinion among the people who use the services as to which of these two terms is preferred. Literature from consumer and advocacy groups mostly indicate that the preferred term to use is “consumer” but there is also disagreement here. Although often use interchangeably, there are distinctive differences between consumers and patients in the context of healthcare. In this article we will try to define which term is used and accepted, where do we draw the line between these two terms and most importantly who comes first, the patient or the consumer.

Authors: Phab.D. Plotnic Olesea, Associate professor, Jean Monnet Professor

                Ciochina Elena, PhD Student, Doctoral School in Law, Political Science and Administrative

Key words: patient, healthcare, consumer, market, law.

Link: http://www.jilip.org/en/8-journal/46-2017-4.html