Patient-centered care is not a new idea. It was quite popular when I was in nursing school in the mid 1970’s. It’s what drove me out of hospital-based care and into home health care within three years of graduation. I wasn’t able to make the difference I wanted to make because we couldn’t achieve patient-centered care. Reemergence of Patient-Centered Care Now as we are mandated to cut and manage the soaring costs of healthcare and improve outcomes all at the same time, the importance of patient-centered care is reemerging. To a new generation of nurses and health care professionals it is new and exciting, and to those of us familiar…
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NAQC : Guiding Principles for Patient Engagement
The Nursing Alliance for Quality Care (NAQC) recently released Guiding Principles for Patient Engagement. This list of nine core principles is designed to assist nurses and other health care providers in delivering high-quality, patient-centered care through full engagement in all aspects of their care. Many of these principles are things that we as nurses do every day, but NAQC reminds us that these things are all central to improving and maintaining high quality patient centered care. The principles include: · There must be a dynamic partnership among patients, their families and the providers of their health care, which at the same time respects the boundaries of privacy, competent decision-making and…