ABSTRACT
Values-based practice is a decision support tool that as its name suggests is a partner to evidence-based practice. Evidence-based practice provides a process that supports clinical decision-making where complex and conflicting evidence is in play. Being based on learnable clinical skills, values-based practice is better understood by 'doing than saying'. This chapter illustrates the values-based practice with two contrasting case histories, its importance in clinical care. Firstly, it highlights the diversity of meanings of the everyday term 'values'. Second is to imagine early symptoms of a potentially fatal disease. The 'extended' multidisciplinary team of values-based practice brings in a range of diverse values as well as knowledge and skills to clinical care. This range of diverse values in turn is the basis of the values-based concept of person-values-centred care – care that starts from and builds on the actual rather than imagined values of the individual patient or family concerned.
