Patientology

'Patientology: Toward the Study of Patients' is an in-depth look at how the patient is an integral part of the Health Care Delivery System (HCDS). The previous statement may be an odd one; of course, patients are pivotal to the industry, but they are being ignored and disregarded in alarming numbers. In fact, patients do not even appear in organizational charts-they are merely assumed to exist. When author and doctor Pamela Brink studied victimology in the 1970s, she quickly saw the relevance to her own patient and nursing experiences as well as the comparison of patients to victims in her studies. This includes an infinite number of stories that show patients' wishes being deliberately ignored or overturned. This unique look at an often-ignored aspect of the HCDS focuses on the science of Patientology, the classification of a patient, the patient's role in the health care system, and much more. The main area of research must be what we can learn from the study of patients themselves.