Quality and Safety in Healthcare

Patient-Centered Care

Definition: Patient-Centered Care refers to the recognition of a patient as the sole controller of care provision and a partner in offering coordinated and passionate care that is based on the values, needs, and preferences of the patient (National Council of State Boards of Nursing, 2009). 

Knowledge

Skills

Attitude

Patient-centered care should integrate patient’s values, effective communication, emotional support, family involvement, and transition of care.

Patient-centered care nurses should have descriptions of social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds that influence the patient's values. 

Competent nurses should elicit the patient's needs, values, and preferences when evaluating care. 

Patient-centered care also involves the communication of patient’s preferences, needs, and values among health care teams. 

Besides, patient-centered care involves offering sensitive care for the multiplicity of human experience. 

Nurses should seek chances to learn more about the patients to offer care based on real patient’s values, preferences, and needs. 

Nurses offering patient-centered care should encourage patients to express their preferences, needs, and values openly. 

Nurses should willingly support patients who differ from their values. 

Patient-centered care calls for a demonstration of an inclusive understanding of concepts and terms related to pain and suffering using physiological models. 

Nurses should have the ability to assess a patient’s pain and suffering. 

Patient-centered care involves the evaluation of a patient’s level of emotional, as well as physical discomfort. 

Nurses should able to offer effective pain-relieving and management treatment options. 

Respect patient’s values in the pain management processes.

Nurses should acknowledge the ethical and legal consequences of patient-centered care.

Patient-centered care requires the ability to recognize informed patient consent and respect the limits of therapeutic relationships. 

Be aware that tension exists between patient’s rights and nurses’ responsibilities of providing ethical care. 

Patient-centered care requires the acknowledgment of the principles of effective communication. 

Nurses should always assess their communication strategies when engaging patients and patient’s families. 

Nurses should be willing to continuously improve their communication skills in patient-centered care.