Patient centred care - Essay Example

Patient centered care should be meant for the patient who has come to the hospital like as if the room in which he is staying in is like none other then is like his own house where his concerns or fear related to his prescribed illness are properly addressed. Where a neat and clean environment gives an excellent look to the hospital where proper diagnosis is carried out by able doctors without any mishaps and where he feels as if he is the leader of that place. It's almost a healthcare systems responsibility to take care of its patients.

But as time has passed by increasing the number of patients many times amongst the system, centre of attention has not been a patient's personal health care rather then saving the system itself. Patient-centered care helps in bringing patients voice to the center of the health care system. It is responsive to the individual patient's preferences, needs and values. It ensures that the patient's voice your voice guides all clinical decisions. Patient-centered care means that the physicians, nurses and support staff take the time to listen to each patient and their family.

Practice development can be an effective catalyst for change in health care, helping nurses transforms the culture of care in their workplace so it becomes and remains patient-centered. Patient centeredness is becoming a widely used, but poorly understood, concept in medical practice. It may be most commonly understood for what it is nottechnology centered, doctor centered, hospital centered, disease centered. Definitions of patient centered care seek to make the implicit in patient care explicit.

Such definitions are, we recognize, oversimplifications which help in teaching and research but fail to capture the indivisible whole of a healing relationship. Perhaps qualitative research comes closer to conveying the qualities of such care. What is Patient Centered Care Do patients need and do doctors really practice it What are its benefits We will focus it through these two questions. Their results indicate that the answer to the second question is "yes." Patients want patient centered care which (a) explores the patients' main reason for the visit, concerns, and need for information; (b) seeks an integrated understanding of the patients' worldthat is, their whole person, emotional needs, and life issues; (c) finds common ground on what the problem is and mutually agrees on management; (d) enhances prevention and health promotion; and (e) enhances the continuing relationship between the patient and the doctor.

Here, then, is the beginning of a truly international definition. Regarding the question whether doctors practice patient centered care, data indicate that doctors vary but on the whole provide most patients with partially patient centered care. Specifically, the average patient centered score on a scale of 0-100is 50.7 .Some doctors are very patient centered and show a wide range of scores, indicating a flexible style. Many others are not very patient centered and show a narrow range of scores, indicating a fixed style.

There is also evidence of tangible benefit: patient centered communication is positively associated with patient satisfaction, adherence, and better health outcomes. Patient perceptions of patient centeredness are important to study. Most educators and researchers focused solely on ratings of experts as they observed behavior in clinical encounters. However, in a study of both observation of the clinical encounter and patient perceptions the patients' perception of the patient centeredness of the interaction was the stronger predictor not only of health outcomes but also of efficiency of health care (fewer diagnostic tests and fewer referrals).

This can be described as the ultimate patient centered Finding: the patients', not the experts', views on patient centeredness predicted important outcomes. Two common misunderstandings about patient centered medicine have come into the limelight. Firstly the fears expressing concerns that patients "may not prefer a patient centered approach" and hence its universal adoption would be "unwise." This concern rests on the misconception that being patient centered means sharing all information and all decisions.

Being patient centered actually means taking into account the patient's desire for information and for sharing decision making and responding appropriately. Secondly do all patients in primary care want all components of patient centeredness implies that patient centered care can be neatly separated into divisible parts. The patients' responses indicated, in contrast, that they uniformly valued all aspects of patient centeredness. Further, although components are used for ease in teaching and research, patient centered clinical practice is a holistic concept in which components interact and unite in a unique way in each patient-doctor encounter.