The Tale of Quaternary Prevention: How Partnering with Patients Leads to a New Approach to Prevention

In the mid-20th century, clinical prevention mainly focused on the disease and its progression. How- ever, the emergence of person-centered care, physician-patient partnerships, and increased awareness of the potential harms of medicine has led to a new concept of prevention. This concept, which is already widely taught in Family Medicine and available in multiple languages, views medicine as a co-construction
between patients and doctors, prioritizes the partnership relationship between the physician and the pa-tient, and acknowledges that medicine itself can be a potential source of health problems. The authors suggest revising the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terminology to include the four proposals of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA), including quaternary prevention under its original definition that implies an ethical stance and a patient-doctor partnership, rather than just a quality
assurance approach.