What Does the Term “Patient and Family-Centered Environments” Mean?

Healthcare Practice Assignment
Name
Institution
Course
Instructor
Date
Healthcare Practice Assignment
Patient-and-family-centered environments are increasingly relevant to enhance patient outcomes and ensure patients’ families also realize their expectations. The contemporary healthcare landscape incorporates these environments and expects health providers to work effectively alongside patients and their families. The paper analyzes what "patient and family-centered environments" mean to me, five healthcare practice elements fitting the description, and ethical and legal considerations that can be made for the elements.
What the Term “Patient and Family-Centered Environments” Mean to Me
In my viewpoint, patient-and-family-centered environments mean different aspects, especially in the modern healthcare context. Most importantly, these environments characterize a critical approach to organizing, delivering, and assessing health care in equally helpful collaborations among health specialists, families, and patients. The concept defines healthcare relationships by emphasizing partnerships with different people regardless of age, care level, and care setting. The partnerships guarantee that healthcare responds to patients' and their families' values, beliefs, and priorities. Kwame and Petrucka (2021, p.6) recognized that in patient-and-family-centered environments, patients and their families classify their “families” and decide how to engage in care and make decisions. This perception depends on acknowledging that patients and families are critical partners for high care safety, quality in direct healthcare experiences and struggles to enhance care for everyone. In these environments, health providers are determined to form respectful and supportive ambiances where patients and their families are considered crucial healthcare members. The approach recognizes that individuals have an essential understanding concerning their conditions and circumstances, which require consideration during healthcare decision-making. Every patient, including their families, deserves high-quality healthcare service, significantly improving outcomes. Their experiences and views are equally important and core to improvement attempts.
Five Elements of Healthcare Practice Today that would fit within the Description
The first healthcare practice element is shared decision-making (SDM) receives much attention in patient-centered healthcare delivery. It incorporates relevant conclusions from evidence-based practice besides a patient’s preferences, values, and desires (Smith, 2016, p.144). SDM encompasses patients and their families working collectively to make essential decisions regarding a specific patient’s care. It guarantees the active participation of patients and families in making decisions as healthcare specialists offer essential expertise and information. SDM ensures that all patients experience patient autonomy, receive updated and accurate information or data, and do not fall victim to conflicts of interest. Patient autonomy is crucial because it integrates acknowledging and preserving patients’ rights to conclude concerning their healthcare guided by their independent preferences, beliefs, and values (Varkey, 2019, p.19). Healthcare professionals must always give patients and their families clear and detailed information concerning their health condition, treatment plans, and potential gains and risks. Such a move allows patients to get the information they aspire to decide. The healthcare staff must convey accurate and reliable information understandably and customized to the person's health literacy level.
Secondly, patient and family-centered care acknowledges cultural diversity’s role and relevance and encourages healthcare stakeholders to respect patients' beliefs and practices in their cultures and religions. Healthcare providers comprehend and accept cultural disparities allowing the dissemination of care appropriately without offending cultures. Quality healthcare stakes are high for individuals experiencing severe illness. Cultural practices and values are increasingly significant in patients and their family members suffering experiences. Besides offering sensitive, efficient, and acceptable palliative healthcare for patients from diverse populations, a concentration on culture is helpful to health systems (Cain et al., 2018, p.1410). With patient-based care, health specialists involve in cultural competence, whereby they obtain critical knowledge and understand various cultures, values, traditions, and health practices. Constant learning commitment is needed to recognize and challenge personal prejudice that might influence care delivery. Cultural competence integrates communicating well with patients and families. The healthcare setting experience language barrier from patients and their families (Espinoza & Derrington, 2021, p.111). Health providers must understand the likelihood of language barriers when interacting with patients and seek interpreters to ensure that information is understandable (Basu et al., 2017, p.246). Patient-centered care also incorporates respectful language that lacks medical terminology or unclear language and is familiar to patients and their families.
Care coordination is the third element present in today’s healthcare practice. It encompasses integrating healthcare services throughout various health settings, disciplines, and providers. The concept allows patients and families to obtain detailed and constant care with various health specialists working together in a patient and family-centered context. It is a crucial aspect that mitigates the strain that kids' unrealized healthcare demands place on families, societies, and the health system. According to McNally and colleagues, care coordination is a patient- and family-centered, evaluation-and-team-based program intended to satisfy kids’ or youths’ needs while improving their families’ caregiving capacities. The phenomenon tackles social, educational, financial, medical, and behavioral demands to attain ideal health outcomes (McNally et al., 2020, p.2). Additionally, it includes managing patient care transitions. For instance, when moving a specific patient from one healthcare facility to the other, a care provider to a health expert, or from a hospital to a rehabilitation center. During these shifts, the providers coordinate to allow effective information transfer and care continuity and prevent any possible gaps. Care continuity is crucial for patient security and best outcomes and decreases the chances of medical mistakes.
Also, patient and family-centered settings acknowledge illness's psychological and emotional effects and focus on offering critical support in these parts. Health specialists or providers tackle patients’ psychosocial and psychological needs, including their families. They provide therapy, counseling, and other significant support assistance. Kumar and colleagues conducted a study and established that the determination to execute Universal health coverage (UHC) had identified the urge to incorporate mental healthcare, a vital UHC element, with the wider health services. Such efforts originate from the noticeable urge to include mental health as a primary health service component, which is crucial to represent UHC (Kumar et al., 2021, p.2). Healthcare providers create a supportive and secure surrounding where patients and their families feel better sharing their concerns, feelings, and opinions. They usually monitor these patients’ non-verbal communication or emotional signals, listen to them, and express empathy toward them. Therapy and counseling interventions included within the patient-centered approach offer an excellent opportunity to discover their feelings, tolerate their health condition problems, and devise techniques to improve their mental wellness. Mental health experts like social workers and psychologists can offer these interventions and support patients and families battling medical conditions.
The fifth important element is effective communication, which is essential in patient and family-centered settings. Healthcare providers are expected to involve in empathetic and effective communication, allowing patients and their families to get accurate and understandable information regarding a patient's medical condition, treatment choices, and diagnosis. Alarjeh et al. (2023, p.2) also added that sharing information and enabling communication with pediatric patients was critical in prognosis, diagnosis, and for informed conclusions whenever a cure was doubtful. According to them, excellent communication can enhance kids’ health-based results and allow them to live and cope well with their illnesses, end-of-life care, and therapy. It is a crucial foundation for patient-centered care, creating a therapeutic connection and allowing patients and their families to participate in their healthcare actively. In the patient-centered care environment, health providers concentrate on clear and detailed communication, acknowledging its relevance in promoting shared decisions...