Patient-Centered Care In Hospital Settings

Patient-Centered Care In Hospital Settings

A Wholistic Perspective

Looking at medical and hospital care from a patient's perspective is a growing part of medical practice in hospital and office settings as evidenced by a US Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that states the six QUALITIES of Medical Care are that care should be:

1. Safe

2. Effective

3. Patient-Centered

4. Timely

5. Efficient

6. Equitable

Matching health care professionals with like-minded patients equals better communication, compliance and clinical outcomes, according to research published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. The research also suggests that some (older) patients get more comfort and satisfaction from a more paternal relationship and generally younger patients get more satisfaction by participating in their health care decisions.

Think of patient-centered medicine as a way of putting the care back into hospital stays. When patients become the focal point of a collaborative effort to honor and meet their individual medical, emotional and spiritual needs, they feel better and when your patients feel better, they heal faster and it improves their medical outcomes.

Ideally, the "teams" could include doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physical, occupational and respiratory therapists, chaplains, "Certified Self-Management Educators" and hospital administrators all working towards caring for the patient/"client's" physical, emotional and spiritual needs while in a hospital or receiving out-patient services.

I included "Certified Self-Management Educators" in my ideal model for a collaborative, patient-focused approach to health care as a way to introduce these emerging health care professionals. These highly trained and certified "self-help" educators are credentialed hypnosis professionals who specialize in teaching people a wide range of guided self-hypnotic and relaxation techniques instead of hypnotizing people in conventional ways. They take this novel approach because the research shows that self-hypnotic training is just as effective as other hypnotic approaches and self-help training eliminates all of the fears and misconceptions about being hypnotized. Given half a chance, these emerging health care professionals have the potential to improve every aspect of living or working in a hospital.