Week 10 Discussion: Patient-Centered Care
Step 1: Provide an example of a time when you actively encouraged your patient(s) to be involved in their own care. Describe how the patient’s action made a difference in their own health. How is patient-centered care supported, or not supported, in your health facility?
Sample Paper
Patient-Centered Care
In a clinical setting, I encountered a patient who had been diagnosed with pneumonia. The patient had always been in and out of the hospital because of the same. After interacting with the patient, I discovered that he had not been taking his medication seriously as prescribed and he always stopped taking them when he started feeling. As a healthcare practitioner, I had to actively had to encourage the patient to be involved in their own care to avoid frequent visits to the hospital. I encouraged the patient to take their medication as prescribed even if they start feeling better before finishing the dosage. I also advised the patient on ways to manage their symptoms while at home. These home remedies included controlling their fever with aspirin, taking a lot of water to help in loosening secretions and to bring up catarrh, taking cough medicines prescribed by the doctor, taking warm beverages and taking steamy baths to ease breathing, staying away from the smoke to enable the lungs to heal and to also get a lot of rest.
The patient taking medication as prescribed and finishing the dosage reduced the risk of the infection coming. Also following the home remedies enabled the patient to recover quickly and were able to return to their normal routine. Adequate rest helped to maintain the recovery progress and also avoid relapse.
How Patient-Centered Care is Supported or Not Supported in Health Facility
Patient-centered care involves treating a person getting healthcare services with respect and dignity and involving them in making decisions about their health (Bokhour et al., 2018). Doing this often improves the healthcare services provided to the patient. The healthcare facility has supported patient-centered care by treating the patients with dignity, compassion and respect. Healthcare practitioners always provide the patient with coordinated care, support and treatment. If patient care revolves around different caregivers, then the caregivers should share and understand the patient’s personal needs and wants.
The health facility also involves the patients in their care plan. This is done by the healthcare practitioner encouraging questions and showing that they are open to ideas from the patient. If the patients are educated about their conditions and treatments, they are empowered to partner with the healthcare practitioner. The health facility also supports the patients’ mental health and this shows how they support patient-centered care. The health facility also helps the patient find a way to get better by involving them in the healthcare decisions all the time. This shows that health facility supports patient-centered care at all times.
References
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>
