MEP: Patient or person centred healthcare

Question 1

Name some common themes of person centred healthcare:

Answer 1

• Treating patients as people and as equal partners in decisions about their care
• Putting people at the centre of all decisions
• Respect for patient preferences
• Compassion, dignity and empathy
• Support for self-care, enablement, autonomy and independence
• Patient choice, control and influence
• Good communication.

Question 2

Examples of person-centred healthcare in practice include:

Answer 2

• Introducing yourself (e.g. the ‘Hello, my name is’ campaign) and explaining your role clearly and explicitly
• Asking, rather than telling, people to do something
• Helping people to make informed choices
• Ensuring people feel able to speak openly about their experiences of taking (or not taking medicines); their views about what medicines mean to them, and how medicines impact on their daily life (this includes any complaints or concerns they have about their medicines/ services received)
• Involving people in decisions about their medicines and self-care
  ETC

Question 3

Give examples of being culturally informed:

Answer 3

• Check how a person would like to be addressed:
  – Some cultures put the given name after the family name, so you may inadvertently pick the wrong one
  – Some people prefer more formality, e.g. Mr Smith rather than Mike, or even Michael
  – A transgender person may prefer to be addressed by a name that is not on their official documentation (and so may anyone else)
• Try not to make unwarranted assumptions