Person-Centered Care: A Case Study

Person-centred care also known as, person centredness, patient-centred care or client-centred care is simply a process of caring a person in a holistic way maintaining his dignity and values. Person-centred care involves a broad concept. It does not have a fixed definition. It acts as a protective covering of a person and acknowledging him as a unique individual with his unique needs, beliefs and choices. Person centredness is a specialized care that is concerned to patients’ right to independence, confidentiality and focuses on patients’ potentialities and positivity instead his limitations and difficulties (Caresearch 2016).

Australian College of Nursing (2014) defined person-centred care as a way of delivering care in which a person or
a patient is the centre of care and it is also a means to establish therapeutic relationship between health care providers and patients. Many believe that the concept of person-centred care is still growing.

According to the Government of Western Australia Department of Health (2015), there are generally recognized dimensions of person-centred care. They are respect, psychological support, physical wellbeing, sharing of knowledge, transformations, collaborative care, family involvement and receiving of care.

Person-centred approaches are set to achieve effective, productive and valuable outcomes in the lives of clients as well as staffs after its implementation. The areas of person-centred care approaches are leadership, sharing of values, individual consequences, community participation, competent staffs, learning environment and partnerships. In leadership approach, certain direction is shown to the patients to achieve their goals and helping them to overcome barriers. Sharing of values approach comprises of re-establishing values through clear communication. In individual outcomes approach, focus is on people, their plans and dealing with challenges. Community participation helps develop productive relationships with family, relatives, friends and society. In competent staffs approach, staffs with valued vision are recruited and encouraged throughout with appraisals and motivation. Learning environments are created to promote and provide new ideas and opportunities to both staffs and patients. Partnerships approach includes working with patients, parents, carers, clinical bodies, and organizations as a whole (Life Without Barriers 2016).

Values and beliefs in person-centred care are very essential as all the things required in practice are underpinned within it.
So clarification of values and beliefs in person-centred care is a must among whom these are aspects are shared like patients, their families, carers, staffs, volunteers, managers and community as a whole. So, for the convenience there is also a template for value and beliefs in person-centred care. The template includes day of the patient, care provided, details of recovery, social events, supporting people, learning new things, person-centred care, role of a staff, management of pain, and coordinating with friends and families. These are to be filled by a staff of the health organization on a regular basis. While delivering person-centred care, it is considered to be appropriate if same carer or nurse deals with a client everyday. This would bring consistency and purity in work ( Bryar & Griffiths
2003).

According to the Nightingale Hammerson (2015) person-centred care strategies are representing dedicated leadership, routine observing and recording of patient opinion reports, involving patients, carers and families in the process of care delivery, bringing developments in providing services, creating staff capability and competence and a positive work settings, forming performance responsibility and accompanying a skillful organizational culture.
Guide to Implementing person-centred care in your health service (2008) identified seven principles that are as follows.

1. Patient as a centre of care: The whole care is focused on patient and his preferences. He can plan and decide about care, treatments and results.
2. Maintaining respect: Patients come from various backgrounds with different cultures, languages, values and social beliefs. They all should be respected.
3. Knowing patient as an individual: This is about accepting and understanding a patient as a unique person and developing relationship between health care providers and recipients beyond their disease condition.
4. Understanding personal strengths: Everyone has his or her own abilities and dreams. So, they should be supported in achieving their goals regardless of their age, culture, education and family
status.