Person-Centered Approaches in Nursing, Essay Example

An understanding of the person-centered approach is a necessary component of healthcare because ultimately, the goal of healthcare professionals should be to ensure that the needs of their patients are being met. As such, the quality of care and patient safety would increase if physicians are nurses focused more significantly on the wants and needs of the patients (Tuominen-Soini et al., 2011). To do so, it is imperative to incorporate patient opinion and feedback into practice to ensure that these person-centered aims are being met.

While the field of healthcare is growing increasingly concerned with performing in accordance with evidence-based practice, it is necessary to combine this understanding of medicine with the personal interests of the patient. To lead policy development to ensure that hospitals begin adopting the person-centered approach in their practice, it is necessary to demonstrate the efficacy of this policy. A major benefit of this approach is that it will provide healthcare professionals with a starting point that can be utilized to generate targeted research projects. Rather than collecting data from hospital statistics to drive study design, researchers can use information generated from patient opinion surveys. This removes the need for researchers to determine the meaning of quantitative data by instead immediately assessing the qualitative statements of patients.

The best way to lead policy development for this issue is to demonstrate its efficacy. Thus, a literature review could be conducted to demonstrate the benefits that this approach has had in terms of patient quality of care improvement. Studies have shown that health care organizations that utilize the person-centered approach are more likely to address the needs of their patients, thereby causing patient satisfaction to increase (Ekman et al., 2011). In addition, individual hospitals can determine the value of this approach simply by determining whether according to patient surveys, the research that is currently being performed reflects patient needs.

In order to facilitate policy change, it is necessary to conduct thorough research and present evidence to the management team in order to argue in favor of person-centered care. It is important to consider that some individuals may be critical of policy change, and it is therefore essential to counter these concerns with evidence from the literature. Throughout this process, the healthcare professional must maintain good communication skills to ensure that the point comes across concisely and with a foundation of knowledge (Stokowski et al., 2010). A similar approach is necessary for the implementation of policy change at any level, ranging from hospital policy makers to legislatures on the state and federal level.

In addition, when engaging policy makers, it is essential to have complete familiarity with already existing policies to ensure that the proposed policy change is in align with existing standards. Therefore, there is a need for an individual that plans to implement policy change to study a wide range of standards, including those put forth by hospitals, accreditation agencies, in addition to state and federal governments. To gain this knowledge, technology could be utilized as a valuable resource (Vest et al., 2010). Furthermore, to ensure that this knowledge is gained on an institutional level, health care organizations would benefit by implementing training programs to ensure that all staff is aware of these policies in addition to how they should best be enforced.

References

Ekman I, Swedberg K, Taft C. (2011). Person-Centered Care — Ready for Prime Time. Eur J Cardiovasc Nurs, 10(4): 248-251.

Stokowski LA, McDonald KQ, Lovejoy A. (2010). Advocacy: It is What We Do. Advances in Neonatal Care, 10(2): 75-82.

Tuominen-Soini H, Salmela-Aro K, Niemivirta M. (2011). Stability and change in achievement goal orientations: A person-centered approach. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(2): 82-100.

Vest JR, Gamm LD. (2010). Health information exchange: persistent challenges and new strategies. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 17(3): 288–294.