Content area
Full Text
Kim Manley and Brendan McCormack argue that person-centredness should inform attempts to measure the quality of care
WHEN DEVISING national healthcare policies, the Department of Health (DH) often refer to specific ideas or models of care.
These concepts currently include personalised, compassionate and dignified care, as well as metrics to measure care outcomes and staff experiences (DH 2008, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety 2008, NHS Scotland 2007).
Personalised, or person-centred, care was a topic of discussion at the RCN's Quality Improvement Network conference in September, when delegates concluded that a set of standards to assess care quality should be developed.
As many healthcare professionals argue, these concepts and qualities are fundamental to nursing and healthcare service delivery, yet they often seem to become lost in our complicated and ever-changing healthcare context.
Person-centred care is poorly defined and little understood. For many healthcare professionals, it is yet another management surveillance device; for others, it offers opportunities for clinicians to demonstrate everything that is good about health care.
Therapeutic relationships
Person -centred care is a term used to describe the therapeutic relationships between care providers and service users, and between care providers themselves.
Service users cannot receive compassionate, dignified and personalised care, however, unless the culture of care in the workplace, as well as at organisational level, is changed.
Thus, successful person-centred care requires the continuous development of...