Patient-Centered Care in Nursing Practice

Patient-centered care (PCC) has become integral to nursing practice as a critical factor in providing quality care. PCC emphasizes increased focus on patients’ needs and interests, and all nursing practices align with patient values. Instead of focusing exclusively on the disease affecting a patient, PCC requires nurses to focus exclusively on patients’ specific information. Nurses treat a health condition based on a patient’s perspective and are responsive to patients’ needs and preferences. The nurse’s role in PCC includes increasing patient self-management and facilitating quality improvement processes. Nurses are in immediate contact with patients and gather a lot of information about them. According to Khuan and Juni (2017), nurses’ immediate contact with patients is essential in establishing and maintaining a trust-based relationship. A major role of nurses in this relationship is to identify patients’ specific needs and problems. A healthy nurse-patient relationship assures patients that their needs have been understood and delivered quality care.

Nurses provide patient care based on core values such as autonomy, respect, and understanding of patients’ abilities, lifestyle, goals, and preferences. Accordingly, nurses must ask patients about their perception of care and the importance of various nursing practices. Although it is impossible to align nurses’ behavior with the caring needs of the patients, nurses need to validate or confirm with patients that their needs are being met (Rassouli et al., 2020). Nurses must focus on all critical aspects of nursing care considered necessary by patients. Nurses can inform hospitalized patients about their conditions and educate them on self-care management practices to enhance patient safety.

Nurses also play a vital role in quality improvement processes to enhance the quality of patient care. Since nurses interact directly with patients, they possess vital information and perspectives that could be used to evaluate patient-centered care to enhance quality improvement (Alagoz et al., 2018). Nurses monitor and assess patients regularly and hence can identify deficits in the quality of care provided. Such information is vital in improving hospital quality to enhance the quality of care given to patients.

Information about patient care is well documented. Research by Fix et al. (2018) postulates that current health care systems focus on patients’ needs to enhance patient satisfaction and healthcare outcomes. Patient-centered care is associated with aspects of high-quality care, such as the provision of medical education and quality improvement. A shift from provider-based care to patient-centered care has increased the need to transform current healthcare systems from disease-focused care to incorporate proactive and patient-centered care (Bokhour et al., 2018). While PCC has proven benefits in healthcare quality, different conceptualizations by healthcare organization leaders hinder the transformational initiatives intended to facilitate patient-centered care adoption.

Further, Rosengren, Brannefors, and Carlstrom (2021) postulate that although PCC is associated with providing high-quality care and enhanced patient satisfaction, healthcare systems are yet to realize these benefits due to limited knowledge and understanding among nurses. Healthcare practitioners are hesitant to adopt PCC due to a lack of understanding about the scope and content of PCC. Knowledge about PCC is essential in ensuring that nurses have the right mindset and skills to understand patients’ needs and preferences. Rassouli et al. (2020) postulates that the adoption of PCC into contemporary healthcare discourse requires evidence-based knowledge to demonstrate its effectiveness in enhancing the quality of care provided to patients. Quality healthcare requires nurses to have updated professional knowledge and skills such as professional, caring relationships to address patients’ needs thoroughly. Patients want to feel that their needs are heard, offered quality services, and are involved in healthcare decisions.

References

Alagoz, E., Chih, M. Y., Hitchcock, M., Brown, R., & Quanbeck, A. (2018). The use of external change agents to promote quality improvement and organizational change in healthcare organizations: a systematic review. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 1-13. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12913-018-2856-9

Bokhour, B. G., Fix, G. M., Mueller, N. M., Barker, A. M., Lavela, S. L., Hill, J. N., … & Lukas, C. V. (2018). How can healthcare organizations implement patient-centered care? Examining a large-scale cultural transformation. BMC health services research, 18(1), 1-11. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-018-2949-5

Fix, G. M., VanDeusen Lukas, C., Bolton, R. E., Hill, J. N., Mueller, N., LaVela, S. L., & Bokhour, B. G. (2018). Patient‐centred care is a way of doing things: How healthcare employees conceptualize patient‐centred care. Health Expectations, 21(1), 300-307. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hex.12615

Khuan, L., & Juni, M. H. (2017). Nurses’ opinions of patient involvement in relation to patient-centered care during bedside handovers. Asian nursing research, 11(3), 216-222. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1976131716301918

Rosengren, K., Brannefors, P., & Carlstrom, E. (2021). Adoption of the concept of person-centred care into discourse in Europe: a systematic literature review. Journal of Health Organization and Management. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHOM-01-2021-0008/full/html