'Health care must refocus on individual' says Queen Mother lecturer

Health care as currently delivered is too impersonal and policy needs to refocus on the individual - that was the message from Professor Jessica Corner, one of the UK's most eminent figures in cancer care at the Queen Mother Nuffield lecture hosted by the University.

Professor Corner first delivered her lecture "Closing the gap between people and health care" this summer at the Royal Society of Arts in London. The University of Dundee was invited to host the same event in Scotland to open it up to a Scottish audience. It is one of the most prestigious lectures in the scientific calendar.

Professor Jessica Corner who works at the Institute of Cancer Research at the Royal Marsden NHS Trust said: " Our encounters with health care as 'patients', or perhaps as the relative of someone receiving treatment or care, seem to be coloured by a feeling that we as people don't matter. We become objects to be processed. Once our health problem is processed, we find ourselves ejected back to our normal lives. Little or no connection exists between the acts of health care and what is normal or what matters to us."

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