Person-Centred Care, Therapeutic Relationship and Communication in Nursing

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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NURSING
Reading 1
Person-centred care
Person-centred care occurs when personhood and person-centeredness is used to
deliver care to patients across a wide-range of settings. Person-centred care mainly deals with
respect and trust and is important under diverse healthcare settings, mental health,
community-based family practice and maternity care.
Person-centred care is recognises individuality such that the care provided is in direct
response to comprehensive need of the person. Thus healthcare-professionals need to be
knowledgeable and skilled about person-centred care approach. However, person-centred
care is beyond individualising care through done through preliminary adjustments in the
physical care. Individualised care permeates under all aspects of care and coincides with the
beliefs and values of the service user and thus requires knowing the both spiritual and
physical needs of the person. For example, in order to deliver person-centred care, proper
assessment must be conducted in order to the known the story of the service users and the
exact needs. These needs can be both healthcare needs, mental needs and spiritual needs.
Interaction or intervention for each individual should be considered for providing
social justice and under the spirit of partnership. This approach of partnership necessitates
empowerment, sharing of power by accepting the acknowledging the ethical rights of
autonomy of service users and thereby helping to engage the service users in the informed
decision-making process. This helps to bring patient empowerment in the decision making
process.
There are enough evidences, which suggest that the person-centred care approach is a
holistic approach which helps to increase the overall level of satisfaction of the service users.

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This approach also found to increase the effective team-work by increasing the provision for
the effective communication and reduction in stress and anxiety among the members of the
multidisciplinary team. Personal attributes of a clinician for implementation of person-
centred approach include open-mindedness, self-awareness, reflectivity and knowledge of
own values and value for individual thoughts. Other associated skills include traits of
effective leadership, excellent motivator, courage to question the prevailing system and high
sense of personal responsibility.
Thus from the above discussion, it can be said that person-centred care must be
internalised by the nursing professionals so that they can permeate comprehensive healthcare
achievements. When the person-centred care coincide with the personal values and with the
surrounding healthcare environment and the cultural thoughts of the service users, it is found
to fetch maximum outcome in the process of care.
Barriers to person-centred care
Barriers to person-centred care impede the proper implementation of the care process.
Person-centred care is often criticised for being too individualistic and time-consuming.
However, focusing on the physiological aspect of the care process might save time but at the
same time fails to optimise the promotion of holistic approach like person-centeredness. As a
result, universal care approach directed towards the physiological needs of a person is
considered to be robotic or criticised as ritualistic behaviour where the healthcare
professionals are disconnected or disengaged. However, when the skilled clinicians are
committed and enthusiastic about implementing the principles of person-centred care,
therapeutic relationships develops with the service users, which helps to increase the outcome
of care.

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The main principles that underline the person-centred care approach are at times
criticised for being optimistic and idealistic and considered difficult to achieve under
complex healthcare environments where there is constant work pressure and tress. However,
healthcare environments must be as therapeutic for example; physical surroundings must
respect the dignity and privacy of the service users so that their sense of threat is not
threatened. However, person-centred care is not only associated with the physical
surroundings it also takes into consideration the cultural environment. A flexible and
supportive atmosphere makes it easier for the service users to navigate swiftly to for their
needs. A flexible work environment also helps the healthcare professionals to act
autonomously and participate in effective decision making process by recognising
innovation. However, the majority of the healthcare environments are complex and large and
do not promote person-centeredness because the schedules and routines of check-up is given
first priority. However, implementing person-centred care is not impossible to implement in
large healthcare organisation what is require is commitment towards its principles.
Furthermore, when there is poor co-ordination and integration between the services, the
disorganisation might result in the generation or care plan which disregards the importance of
the person’s partnership and opinion.