The Importance of Patient Engagement in Nursing Practice

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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During transition from nursing education to real practice, it is necessary for nurse to
apply relevant theories in actual practice. Apart from theoretical concepts, another requirement
for registered nurse is to follow all the professional standards required for nursing practice in
Australia. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of Australia also lays down many
standards for all registered nurse and nursing associated to follow during actual practice. The
standard 2.2 of the NMC code of standards mentions that nurses should: “Recognise and respect
the contribution that people can make to their own health and wellbeing” (Nursing and
Midwifery Council, 2018). This standard implies that nurse have the duty to encourage patient’s
active participation in their own health and decision making. The essay aims to further discuss
about this standard and discuss about different ways in which nurse can evaluate patient’s ability
to maintain their own health and actively participate in health care decision making and disease
management process. The essay will critically analyze the benefits of patient engagement and
active participation on patient outcomes and minimizing any patient safety issues.
Active participation in health care is the process of working that supports an individual to
take active role in key activities of daily life and take control of their own care. It involves a
process, where patients are empowered to share their views and opinions related to care
management and display equal effort to achieve the goals of health care (Castro et al., 2016). In
the health care field, patient participation in sharing their opinion about treatment methods and
sharing feelings related to illness and disease management is encouraged as it empowers patients
and increases the likelihood of committing medical errors or patient safety issues (Vahdat et al.,
2014). Hence, indirectly patient engagement in care plays a role in improving quality of health
service, patient outcomes and patients experience with care. As nurses are required to engage in
patient-centered care, encouraging patient’s participation is a crucial responsibility for them as

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this will determine how successfully they communicate with patients, understand patient’s
concerns and integrate patient’s preference in care plan.
During the management of diverse patient group, there are many critical health situations,
where patient’s control and responsibility for maintaining their own health is vital for their
recovery. For example, for a patient with uncontrolled blood sugar level, involving patient
engagement in their own care is vital to achieve optimal blood glucose control and reduce
complications. Such engagement is important because certain patient related behavior such as
poor diet, no diet modifications and poor lifestyle are the caused behind poor diabetic outcomes.
In such context, actively collaboration with patients helps to identify risk behavior in patient and
improve those behaviors and outcomes to efficiently manage type 2 diabetes. In contrast, lack of
participation of such patients result in experience of struggle for patients in managing their diets,
physical activity and daily glucose monitoring capacities. Patient disengagement creates gap
between knowledge and effective health management too (Graffigna et al., 2014). The benefits
of type 2 diabetic patients in their own health management has been revealed by Graffigna et al.
(2016) which demonstrated that patient engagement has the potential to decrease long term
adherence to complex regimens.
According to Vahdat et al. (2014), patient engagement is defined as the actions taken by
individuals to obtain greater benefits for health services. Although all patients may not be
comfortable enough to directly participate in health care decision, however nurse can encourage
such patients to take an active role through their communication skills. Nurses who believed in
the concept of patient centered carefully engage with participants to make informed decisions
and use their communication and clinical skills to support patients to overcome all obstacles in
care pathway (Barello et al., 2017). As evidenced by Bombard et al. (2018), new graduating

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nurse are trained to learn patient engagement skills so that they easily embrace models that
endorses collaborative care and patient autonomy.
Different behavioral and relational strategies that have been use by nurse to engage
patients include sensitizing patients to be aware of their active role in treatment plans, enhancing
health literacy of patient providing reliable information about disease, promoting patient’s
autonomy, encouraging interaction between formal and informal care networks and coordinating
the care delivered with the extended health care team (Barello et al., 2017). A systematic review
by Bombard et al. (2018) regarding engaging patients to improve quality of care indicated that
training sessions to explain patients about their contribution to care and sensitizing staff and
patients to contextual and cultural issues enhance engagement process and results in improved
access to care. The review of findings related to outcomes obtained following patients
engagement revealed that such initiative results in enhanced service delivery improved
governance and development of specific policy documents. In contrast, information sharing is
one of the components of patient engagement that facilitates understanding about health status
among patients and the need for taking control over their own health. As patient’s knowledge
and attitude towards disease management is improved through information sharing, such
strategies eliminates barriers that patient faced in active participation in care too (Wong et al.,
2017).
The quality of nurse–patient relationship is a critical factor that determines the extent to
which patients take interest in their own care. However, the role of nurse in fulfilling the NMC
standard 2.2 becomes difficult because of several barriers encountered during the process such
poor communication between patient and nurse, issues of disrespect and privacy issues and lack
of patient centered care values. The main rational behind patient’s low interest or disengagement