Patient Centered Model

Health care is in a constant state of change. For a long time, care was dictated by the physician and the patient was expected to treat the diagnosis or treatment plan as final. Nurses served the physician, while providing the beginnings of holistic care to the patient. Today, the industry is rapidly evolving. Terms such as medical home, evidence-based practice, patient-centered care, nursing science, advanced practice providers and so forth dominate the academic publications. One thing is certain: The physician is no longer the center of the health care circle: It is solely the patient at the in the center of the circle. In this paper, we will explore how evidenced-based practice and health care quality impact patient-centered care.

Patient-centered care places the patient “as the source of control and full partner in providing compassionate and coordinated care based on respect for patient’s preferences, values, and needs.” (QSEN, 2012) Too often healthcare professionals look at the patient as only a medical problem, not as an individual person. In a 2013 publication, Chen and Snyder noted the traditional disease-focused model is changing to one where care is customized to each individual person. There are six dimensions of patient-centered care, including the previously mentioned definition to include: comfort, coordination and integration of care, free flow of information, spiritual awareness and involvement of family and friends (Drenkard, 2013). These dimensions show the importance of patient-centered care. Patient-centered care forces the providers, nurses included, to look at each patient as an individual person; not every patient diagnosed with pneumonia is the same, each has different values and cultures that must be treated exclusively. Ensuring a patient can access a chaplain or Bible is providing patient-centered care; treating a partner in a same-sex relationship the same as heterosexual partners is providing patient-centered care. This is the future of reigning in an out of control health care

No longer is it acceptable to do things in a certain technique without research showing the effectiveness and efficacy of the policy or procedure. As we will demonstrate below, evidence-based practice is the development of new knowledge, the evidence, and rendering that newfound knowledge into practice. One of nursing’s founders, Florence Nightingale, utilized evidence-based practice regarding the unsanitary conditions she witnessed during the Crimean War where seven soldiers died from disease for every one soldier dying from his wounds (McDonald, 2001). The findings of Nightingale and others led to reform of hospitals that dramatically reduced unnecessary mortality. A more recent contribution of evidence translating into practice is a study involving person-centered handover (nursing report). The study showed that involving the patient and family in the nurse’s report led to higher rates of satisfaction concerning exchange of information (Kullberg, Sharp, Johansson, Brandberg, & Bergenmar, 2017).

Conclusion

Patient-centered care is a far-reaching concept that places the patient at the center of the sphere of healthcare; members of the healthcare team must always remember to place the needs of the patient above all else. Health care quality and evidence-based practice play a direct role in moving the patient to the center of care. Congress founded the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute