“Patient-centered care” can drive improvements in the quality of hospital care, according to a new study. The study reported areas that are highly rated by patients as well as areas that could be further improved, according to the analysis of patient survey.
Patient-centered care
Patient-centered care includes two aspects:
- Placing the patient first, rather than reducing them to the sum of their symptoms or medical condition.
- Providing patients’ first-hand reports of their care to reinforce or confirm areas in which care is working well, and to guide improvements in high quality service.
Investigators analyzed the experiences of over 1,000 patients who underwent coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and/or valve replacement from April 2014 to March 2018.
Participants complete a 56-question telephone survey after being discharged from hospital. The questions include:
- Communication with doctors and nurses
- Medications
- Patient/family involvement in care
- Pain control
- Physical environment
- coordination of care
- discharge planning
participants were asked to rate each question from 0 (worst) to 10 (best), and the overall result was quite positive.
Category | Percentage of all participants |
Rating their overall hospital care as a 9 or 10 | 73% |
Discussing help needed after discharge | 96.6% |
Receiving written discharge information | 93.2% |
Space around their room always quiet at night | ＜40% |
Hospital staff describing only the potential side effects of the new medications given to the patients | 45% |
"These findings are important because historically, many efforts to improve hospital care have been driven by administrators or clinicians—largely in absence of the 'patient voice'," said lead investigator Mr, Kemp.
"Being the first Canadian study of its kind, there is an opportunity for it to serve as a baseline when examining future data from this survey, both in Alberta and from other Canadian provinces. The study methodology can be also replicated elsewhere in Canada and throughout the world to examine the experience of other clinical populations such as joint replacement patients, labor and delivery patients, and seniors living with chronic diseases."
The study is a step in the right direction to help hospitals and healthcare providers offer better help and service to the patients. Patient-centered care is dependent on the new way in which patients can speak.
