Patient-Centered Care in Critical Care Units

Running head:ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE
ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE1
Assignment 1
The concept of patient-centered care has been discussed since 2000; however, the actual
implementation of patient-centered care is now becoming a prime focus of the health care sector,
especially in critical care (Kogan, Wilber and Mosqueda 2016). The institution of medicine
defined patient-centered care as the care provided to the patient which is responsive, respectful
and ensures you address the special preference and needs of the patients (Lines, Lepore and
Wiener 2015). Hence, in order to promote the patient-centered care as the quality standard in
the clinical setting, health care professionals should consider the patient-centeredness which also
includes the family members. The primary goal of patient-centered care is to improve individual
health outcome and improve the quality of the life of the patients (Smith, Swallow and Coyne
2015). While patient-centered care supports the wellbeing of the patient by promoting faster
recovery, it is also beneficial for health care providers (Landsperger et al. 2016). The health care
providers stand to benefit through improved patient satisfaction, high staff productivity, morale,
less job burnout and reduced cost of care (Hoffman and Guttendorf 2017). The growing body of
evidence highlighted that in critical care, the patient in critical care are vulnerable because of the
severity of the disease they are experiencing (Smith, Swallow and Coyne 2015). The critical
care received by patients when they are experiencing life threatening health conditions,
especially where they experience the risk of failing vital organs to live a healthy life. Another
factor highlighted by Kleinpell et al. (2015) is that in the critical care unit, a significant number
of patients are highly vulnerable due to the life-threatening health conditions. In these cases, the
autonomy of the patients and frequently compromised and sometimes health professionals failed
to consider the opinion or conduct shared decision making by incorporating the family members

ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE2
of the patients. Consequently, in a majority of the cases, the family members of the patients feel
offended, resulted in low patient satisfaction. The world health organization reported that
approximately 55,000 critically ill patients are admitted each day and 50% of them may be
subjected to sudden death because of lack of accurate patient-centered care (Smith, Swallow and
Coyne 2015). Consequently, patients are subjected to high psychological distress such as
anxiety, depression and other mental issues and usually lose hope of living a healthy life.
Hence, patient-centered care is one of the crucial parameters in the critical care unit which
enhance the quality of the life of the patients by considering the critical needs of the patients.
The critical care service providers’ address the specific needs of the patients by nursing advanced
therapeutic, monitoring and diagnosis where each of them incorporates the fundamental principle
of patient-centered care (Landsperger et al. 2016). There are eight principles of the patient
centered care which assists health professions to provide best patient centered care. The
principles include respect for patients’ preferences, coordination and integration of care, physical
comfort, information and education, emotional support involvement of family, community, and
transition, access to the health care services (Kogan, Wilber and Mosqueda 2016). In order to
incorporate these principles, health professionals are required to acquire a specific set of skills
which empower patients, boost their self-esteem, change their perspective towards living a
hopeful and healthy life. Lines, Lepore, and Wiener (2015) suggested that for providing patient-
centered care, health professionals, especially nurses should acquire communications, cultural
competency, professionalism, critical thinking, time management, attention to the details. While
others skills are mandatory for providing safe and responsive care, in the critical care unit, the
most desired skills are effective therapeutic verbal and nonverbal communication, time
management and critical thinking. Good communication between nurse and patient’s or family

ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE3
members of the patients contribute to the ability to provide patients with individualized care
which include inducing the feeling of safety, love, empowerment, and confidence during
treatment and making the center of decision making (Lines, Lepore, and Wiener 2015).
Nonverbal communication also plays a crucial in conveying a strong message to the patients,
reflecting empathy and compassion. Critical thinking is another crucial skills since the patients
in the critical care sometimes failed to provide their decision or preferences due to health issues
and nurses are required to use their critical thinking to take an appropriate decision for the
patients (Smith, Swallow and Coyne 2015). Hence, patient-centered care is one of the
fundamental quality standards in critical care.
Patient centred care in a hospital settings covers a range of activities starting from the
involvement of the in individual care to the involvement of the public in the health policy
decisions. However, there is no standard definition of patients centred care and is poorly
understood. It is to be found that nurses find it difficult to provide patient centred care to
critically ill patient, due to lack of the proper frameworks (Kitson 2018). There are literary
evidences of ,any frameworks that has been developed for providing care to the elderly people,
but attempts for applying them in the critical care context has found to be extremely difficult.
Swickard, et al. (2017) have developed a conceptual framework for practice which was based on
the needs of the patient. Such a framework would allow the nurses to contribute optimally to the
client outcome. The Synergy Model of patient centred care describes patient and characteristics
of the family spanning the continuum of health and illness (Cypress 2013). These characteristics
assists the nurse recognise the needs of the patients and the family members (Cypress 2013) .The
synergy model considers the following characteristics of the patient- Stability, complexity,
Vulnerability, Resiliency, Predictability, availability of the resources, patient participation in