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Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare John Ballatt, Penelope Campling, RCPsych Publications, 2011, £25.00, pb, 208 pp. ISBN: 9781908020048

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Michael Holland
Michael Holland*
Affiliation:
MBA MRCPsych, Associate Medical Director, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, email: [email protected]
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The Psychiatrist , Volume 36 , Issue 10 , October 2012 , pp. 399
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2012

Combining their extensive managerial and clinical experience, John Ballat and Penelope Campling put forward an interesting view on what they think has gone wrong with healthcare and how they feel it can be fixed. The book looks at the delivery of care and service design from a very different angle to most current texts on the topic. The authors extensively unpick system failings, drawing on some of the recent highlights in healthcare such as Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust report and government policy initiatives including the current legislation.

Although I cannot say that I agreed with everything the book had to say about the current state of healthcare and its future direction, it certainly caused me to stop and think. It makes an impassioned case to think again about how we design and deliver healthcare in the interests of our patients to rediscover the caring side of our profession and why we went into healthcare in the first place. The book is not always easy to read as Ballatt and Campling often challenge the status quo. They explore in depth what makes up kindness and why they think it is currently missing from the health service, and are clearly passionate in the belief that healthcare can be improved with kindness. I was disappointed that the book ended where it did as I hoped for a clearer plan on how their thinking could be realised in practice and perhaps even some examples of where they saw it being currently applied in healthcare.

This book is aimed at anyone interested in the current state of affairs in health. It challenges those of us who are trying to improve services in the face of the sudden changes and swingeing cuts, to remember that caring for our patients is central to what we do and that kindness is at the heart of that. If you are looking for a challenging read that may make you feel quite uncomfortable about the state of current care and at times quite angry, but also reminds you of why you do what you do, then this book could be for you.

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