Delve into the transformative world of patient-centered care in the nursing sphere. This in-depth overview unravels the critical importance and implications of this approach, giving explicit insight into its role within nursing. Explore the defining principles, understand the benefits of its implementation in clinical settings, and examine various models and examples. Towards the end, learn about strategies to facilitate a rewarding clinical placement through this paradigm of care, with a particular focus on QSEN's role in the promotion and enhancement of patient-centered practices in nursing. Get ready to reimagine the healthcare experience, focusing on patients' direct needs, comfort, and safety.
Understanding Patient-Centered Care in Nursing
Patient-Centered Care is a critical aspect in the world of nursing. It determines nursing approaches, shapes interactions with patients and ultimately influences the health outcomes experienced by patients.
Definition: What is Patient-Centered Care and Why is it Important?
Patient-Centered Care is a healthcare approach where care is tailored around the patient's unique needs, experiences, and expectations. It emphasizes active patient involvement in the decision-making process, encouraging a shared partnership between the healthcare providers and the patient.
Understanding the importance of Patient-Centered Care is crucial as it directly impacts the quality of healthcare. It delivers multiple benefits including improved patient satisfaction, enhanced patient safety, reduced healthcare costs, and potentially better patient health outcomes.
For example, a patient with chronic pain may have prioritised maintaining daily functional activities over pain elimination. With Patient-Centered Care, the treatment plan would respect and incorporate this preference, instead of solely focusing on pain relief.
The role of QSEN Patient Centered Care
The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) provides clear guidelines for Patient-Centered Care in nursing. QSEN emphasizes understanding each patient or designee as the source of control and as a full partner when considering their care plan.
It's interesting to note that QSEN have outlined six competencies in relation to Patient-Centered Care. These include the ability to elicit patient values, preferences and beliefs about healthcare. Furthermore, it includes giving patients the opportunity to voice their values and beliefs. This ensures that their perspectives are integrated into the care plan.
Patient Centered Care Principles in Nursing
There are certain guiding principles in implementing Patient-Centered Care in the nursing profession. These principles serve as a blueprint on how to provide care that truly puts patients at the heart.
The main principles are:
- Respect for patients' values, preferences, and expressed needs
- Coordinated and integrated care
- Clear, high-quality, and accessible information and education for the patient and family
- Physical comfort and emotional support
- Involvement of family and friends
Benefits of Implementing Patient Centered Care in Clinical Placement
In the nursing context, clinical placement refers to a scheduled and supervised experiential learning opportunity in a clinical setting.
Implementing Patient-Centered Care in clinical placements presents numerous benefits:
| Improved patient satisfaction |
| Increased patient safety |
| Enhanced healthcare efficiency |
| Reduced healthcare costs |
For instance, by implementing Patient-Centered Care in a clinical placement setting, a nursing student working with a diabetes patient can understand the patient's daily routine and dietary preferences. This knowledge can be used to tailor a more realistic and effective meal and medication plan that the patient is more likely to adhere to.
Models and Examples of Patient-Centered Care in Nursing
As Patient-Centered Care has grown in importance, a variety of models and frameworks have been developed to guide its application in nursing. These models aim to provide a systematic approach to delivering care that is centred around the patient.
The Patient-Centered Care Model
One of the most renowned frameworks for Patient-Centered Care is the Picker Institute's Eight Principles of Patient-Centered Care. These guidelines act as a compass in ensuring that patients remain the focal point in every facet of healthcare provision.
| Respect for patient's preferences and values |
| Patients are treated as individuals with their own unique fears, concerns and lifestyle factors. |
| Coordination and integration of care |
| Care should be organised, avoiding unnecessary and repeated tests and ensuring smooth transitions between care settings. |
| Information, communication and education |
| Patients are well informed about health issues and treatments available, allowing them to participate fully in their own care. |
| Physical comfort |
| Considerations for the physical comfort of the patient should be central, including effective pain management and help with activities of daily living. |
| Emotional support and alleviation of fear and anxiety |
| Patients' emotional needs should be met, especially addressing any fears or anxieties related to their condition or treatment. |
| Continuity and transition |
| Patients should experience continuity of care and not feel abandoned once treatment finishes. |
| Access to care |
| Considering waiting times, quality of basic amenities and access to location. |
Examples of Successful Patient and Family Centered Care
One great example of a Patient-Centered Care initiative is happening at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. They introduced the Patient and Family Advisory Council for Quality and Safety to involve patients and families in the design and delivery of care. This approach has led to improvements in patient satisfaction, safety, and care quality.
Another example comes from the story of a 44-year-old man, who was living with advanced congestive heart failure. Because of his condition, trips to the hospital were regular, and he was readmitted within a month after every discharge. When the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver started to involve the patient in decisions about his care plan, the situation began to change. The man highlighted his desire to have less hospital visits and more home-based care.
The new plan involved home healthcare nurses visiting regularly, and the man was given guidance to control his symptoms at home. If hospital visits were needed, they were planned in advance to avoid emergencies. The result was a 90% decline in the frequency of his hospital visits, improving his quality of life significantly.
This instance demonstrates successful implementation of Patient-Centered Care. It not only improved the health outcomes for the patient but also led to cost savings for the healthcare system.
Both of these examples clearly illustrate how Patient-Centered Care can lead to meaningful changes in healthcare quality and patient satisfaction. It underscores the importance of including patients and their families in the design and execution of their care plans.
Achieving Rewarding Clinical Placement Through Patient-Centered Care
Patient-Centered Care can play an integral role in transforming a routine clinical placement stint into a rewarding and gratifying educational experience for nursing students. By involving patients and their families in their care, nursing students can gain practical insights into an approach that promotes improved health outcomes, patient satisfaction, and care efficiency.
How to Establish Patient and Family Centered Care
Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) is not merely an approach to care but a philosophy that moves beyond treating diseases to focusing on the whole person and their health. Here is how to establish PFCC in a healthcare setting.
PFCC represents a method of care delivery that respects and responds to the individual needs and values of patients and their families. It forms an essential part of collaboration and partnering with patients, their families, and other healthcare professionals to deliver the highest standard of healthcare.
First and foremost, to establish PFCC, everyone involved in providing care, including students during clinical placements, need to embrace a specific set of values and behaviours focused on the needs of the patient and their family.
- Recognise and respect the expertise and insights that patients and families bring to the healthcare partnership.
- Consider patients and their families as full partners in the provision of care.
- Encourage and support active involvement of patients and families in care and decision making at the level they choose.
This involves sharing complete and unbiased information useful in making critical decisions and offering support, enabling patients to make the best healthcare decisions.
The Royal Bolton Hospital in the UK offers an apt example. They conducted a patient satisfaction survey, incorporated patient feedback to improve services, and involved patients and their families in the process of redesigning care units. This approach transformed patient care and visibly improved the patient’s experience.
QSEN's Role in Promoting and Enhancing Patient Centered Care in Nursing
QSEN or Quality and Safety Education for Nurses play an indispensable role in advancing and enhancing Patient-Centered Care in nursing.
QSEN is an endeavour to prepare future nurses with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems in which they work. It dedicates one of its six primary competencies to Patient-Centered Care.
In promoting and enhancing Patient-Centered Care, QSEN goes beyond theoretical knowledge. It emphasizes the need for nursing students to develop attitudes and skills that influence their Patient-Centered Care practices. Some KSAs for Patient-Centered Care, as recommended by QSEN, are:
- Value seeing health care situations ‘through patients' eyes.'
- Recognise the patient or designee as the source of control and full partner in providing compassionate and coordinated care based on respect for patient’s preferences, values, and needs.
- Share authority and decision-making power with patients and families.
Through its KSAs, QSEN encourages nursing students and professionals to focus on empathy, active listening, and collaboration, leading to a better understanding of the patient’s experience and improved Patient-Centered Care. It places high importance on making patients and their families feel valued, respected, and engaged in healthcare decisions.
For instance, a nursing student, guided by QSEN competencies, may approach a clinical placement in an elderly care facility with a focus to understand each person’s individual needs, preferences, and values. The student may spend time talking to a resident about their life, fears, and aspirations. This student will stand a better chance at providing care that is respectful and responsive to the elderly person’s specific needs.
Patient-Centered Care - Key takeaways
- Patient-Centered Care is a healthcare approach where care is tailored around the patient's unique needs, experiences, and expectations. It emphasizes active patient involvement in the decision-making process.
- The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) provides guidelines for Patient-Centered Care in nursing, outlining six competencies related to Patient-Centered Care, including the ability to elicit patient values, preferences and beliefs about healthcare.
- Implementing Patient-Centered Care in clinical placements can improve patient satisfaction, increase patient safety, enhance healthcare efficiency, and reduce healthcare costs.
- The Picker Institute's Eight Principles of Patient-Centered Care is a renowned framework for Patient-Centered Care. These principles are aimed at ensuring that patients remain the focal point in every facet of healthcare provision.
- Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) is a philosophy which moves beyond treating diseases to focusing on the whole person and their health. It requires everyone involved in providing care to embrace a specific set of values and behaviours focused on the needs of the patient and their family.
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