A person-centred approach requires partnership and mutuality, respect and insight into others’ values and beliefs.
It involves all partners in care:
- patients
- healthcare professionals
- carers
- other agencies.
Key questions
- Who are the partners in care?
- What are their values and expectations?
- What are the core values that underpin this aspect of care?
- What are the messages from partners in care, patients, carers and staff?
- To what extent can mutuality and consensus be achieved?
- How do we bring this information together to inform care?
Consider involving
- Patient Focus Public Involvement (PFPI) team
- Established user groups
- Community groups
- Carers organisations
- Sources of support for patient and carer involvement
- Leaders from all professional groups involved
- Key individuals from all departments/organisations and agencies involved
Consider using
- Patient stories
- Team values
- Existing survey data
- Focus groups
- Consensus building techniques
- Mechanisms for ongoing feedback and communication
Organisational support
Your board can facilitate this kind of approach by:
- ensuring patient experience and feedback is evident at board level and reflected in management communication
- creating capacity, support and systems for patient and public involvement in service planning and individual practice projects
- providing a network of support for facilitators
More on organisational support
Marie Cerinus, Director of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals (NMAHP) Practice Development, NHS Lanarkshire, and her colleagues, began their process by seeking to understand exactly what patients, carers and the public expect of them before trying to develop an effective relationship.
“We wanted to involve all nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, in all settings,” explains Marie. “So we used as many routes of communication as possible. We included multidisciplinary groups and committees and patient partnership forums.”
“Sometimes you need to take a step back to move forward,” she says, “but getting the foundations right in the first place is a worthwhile investment.”
The project developed from examining ‘therapeutic relationships’ to producing guidance on ‘caring and compassionate practice’.
With the foundation in place, the small project team developed their action plan and guidance by:
- reviewing literature
- sharing their own experiences
- using a continuous improvement cycle
- reviewing senior charge nurse team leader objectives
- reviewing the annual complaints report.
“This has been so successful that the guidance is being reviewed for adoption by other staff groups.”
April 2009
Click on the link link below to conduct a search within the Evidence into Practice portal.
Please be aware that you will receive a set of search results, not a definitive list of literature relating to person-centredness.
Literature search: