Patient-Centered Care

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Providing care today is much concentrated on “patient-centered” or “person centered,” or delivering care using a “client-centered approach”. In this discussion defines the history of the terms client-, patient-, and person-centered care and then focus on person-centered care, especially as it relates to nursing. In its landmark book Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001, p. 40), the Institute of Medicine (IOM) defined patient centered as “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” Thus, efforts to promote patient-centered care should consider patient-centeredness of patients (and their families), clinicians, and health systems. …show more content…

It was Florence Nightingale who differentiated nursing from medicine by its focus on the patient rather than the disease. She recognized the practice of nurses encompassed the patient’s overall environment including warmth, ventilation, diet, pure air, pure water, cleanliness, light, the effects of noise, and the social environment. The holistic nature of nursing is reflected in the following excerpt from Nightingale’s notes: In all these things, a convalescent is, so to speak, like a child; neither mind nor body has recovered its proper tone, and, for a certain time differing in different diseases, the nurse has a guide him by her own experience. She has this great advantage, that she has watched the whole progress of the case, from the point of danger up to that of recovery, and by keeping the whole chain in view she will be able to find the right course. (Nightingale & Skretkowicz, 2010, p. 208). Also, in distinguishing nursing from medicine, Nightingale focused on the concept of health and not …show more content…

Today, the discipline of nursing is expressed through a metaparadigm of four interacting components—person, environment, health, and nursing—with caring as the focus of practice (Fawcett, 1984). The environment component focuses on the internal and external surroundings that affect the person, including physical and social factors. Finally, the nursing component nurtures optimum health for people through mutual relationships in a caring environment. The caring relationship between the nurse and the person in need of nursing care has been described as a key concept in nursing and could facilitate health and healing by involving the person's genuine needs. A trusting relationship between the nurse and the person in need of healthcare is a prerequisite for good home-based nursing care whether it is based on face-to-face encounters or remote encounters through distance-spanning technology. A trusting relationship could reduce the asymmetry of the caring relationship which could strengthen the person's position. The relationship requires conscious efforts from the nurse and a choice of level of the relationship. The trusting relationship was reciprocal and meant that the nurse had recognize the patient or designee as the source of control and full partner in providing compassionate

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