Values-based practice in primary care: easing the tensions between individual values, ethical principles and best evidence.

Background: The provision of health care is inseparable from universal values such as caring, helping and compassion. Consideration for individual values, particularly those of the patient, has also been increasing. However, such consideration is difficult within the context of modern health care, where complex and conflicting values are often in play. This is particularly so when a patient's values seem to be at odds with evidence-based practice or widely shared ethical principles, or when a health professional's personal values may compromise the care provided.

Suggested New Framework: Values-based practice, a framework developed originally in the domain of mental health, maintains that values are pervasive and powerful parameters influencing decisions about health, clinical practice and research, and that their impact is often underestimated. Although it shares starting points with other approaches to values, it suggests that our current approaches lead us to ignore some important manifestations of values at both the general level, as relevant in legal, policy and research contexts, as well as at the individual level, as relevant in clinical practice. Drawing on ideas from philosophy, values-based practice significantly extends the range of phenomena that may be regarded as value-laden. It suggests that one of the reasons for overlooking values is that they are presumed to be shared when not apparently conflicting. Values-based practice is an approach to supporting clinical decision-making, which provides practical skills and tools for eliciting individual values and negotiating these with respect to best available evidence.