Importance of Patient Engagement in Healthcare

Running head: PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
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1
PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
Patient engagement is considered to be one of the most significant attributes of quality
and safe care by the nurses. This essay will argue how patient participation is important in
maintaining quality and safe patient outcomes in healthcare. This assignment will discuss the
different important aspects of patient engagement in healthcare and the ways it results in
positive health outcomes on patients.
Patient participation in decision-making is one of the important principles of patient-
centred care and every nursing professional should incorporate such attributes in their care
practices. A review of various literatures had revealed that patient participation in healthcare
has been associated with improved treatment outcomes (Barello et al., 2016). These
literatures have shown that patient participation causes improvement in the control of
diabetes, better physical functioning in case of arthritis, improvement in the health of patients
with myocardial infarctions and others. Patient participation is also seen to increase patient’s
compliance with medication and with secondary preventive actions.
Nursing leaders as well as the organizations have the responsibility of guiding novice
nurses and emphasizing the importance of participation of the patients in decision making
process (Menichetti et al., 2016). The nurse leaders need to motivate both the nurses as well
as the healthcare teams to promote participation of the patients in treatment decision making.
The leaders need to ensure that the efforts of the novice nurses should include enhancement
of the access of the patient to various forms of multifaceted information providing patents
with different systems and tools that would help patients in decision-making. Hardyman
(2015) had supported the fact and stated that when nurses are able to enhance the patient
participation and consider patients as equal partners in healthcare decision-making, the
patients feel encouraged to take part in their own treatment procedures and thereby follow the
treatment plan. In this way, nurse leaders can ensure that a better health maintenance service
is provided to patients.

2
PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
Every registered nursing professional have the responsibility of ensuring clinical risk
management. Clinical risk management is mainly concerned with improvement of the quality
as well as the safety of the healthcare services by identification of the circumstances and the
opportunities that put the patients at risks of harm and then acting in order to prevent and
control those risks (Graffigna et al., 2015). It has been found that including patients in their
own care relates with the reduction of the risks of erroneous treatments by healthcare teams.
When nurse leaders guide their healthcare team members to include patients in their own
care, the patients feel accepted (Irizzary et al., 2017). The patients tend to reveal important
information that can prevent the application of wrong treatments or medications that can have
threatening situations on the patients.
Nurse leaders also have the duty of quality improvement and modification of
management practices that ensure high quality care. When registered nurses include patients
in their own care, they can ensure higher levels of patient satisfaction. One of the best ways
of ensuring patient participation is to engage the patient in giving informed consent (Singh et
al., 2016). Informed consent allows the registered nurses to use their leadership attributes and
thereby guide the patients first by discussing their disorders in details and then explaining the
various treatment options available to the patients. The registered nurses also need to explain
the pros and cons of the treatments and then allow the patients giving them the full freedom
to decide what they want to do (Alvarez et al., 2016). Through informed consents, registered
nurses can respect the autonomy and dignity of the patients and these in turn make the
patients feel respected and satisfied with treatment. The patients are seen to feel empowered
and thereby their adherence to the treatments increases (WHO, 2016). This results in quality
care of the patients with positive health outcomes.
Evidence based studies have revealed a number of strategies by which nurses can
include patients in their own care processes. One of them is asking for informed consent.