Patient-Centred Care: Reflective Analysis and Action Plan

This essay provides a comprehensive reflection on patient-centred care, exploring its definition, importance, and application within the healthcare context, specifically focusing on the nursing profession. The reflection utilizes Graham Gibb's reflective model to analyze the student's understanding of patient-centred care, encompassing descriptions of the concept, the emotions it evokes, evaluations of its significance, and a thorough analysis of its impact on healthcare delivery. The essay emphasizes the shift towards a patient-centered approach, highlighting the value of considering patients as the central focus of healthcare decisions. The conclusion reinforces the student's commitment to integrating evidence-based knowledge and clinical reasoning in nursing practice, with an action plan designed to improve patient experiences and outcomes by prioritizing patient needs, fostering patient participation, and creating a collaborative healthcare environment.

Running head: REFLECTION ON PATIENT CENTRED CARE 1
Patient Centred Care
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Patient-Centred Care
Primarily, patient-centred care is a well-known concept in the healthcare world. Although
there exist varied interpretations by different persons due to its variable nature. In that case, its
applicability and characteristics may not be clearly understood among different parties.
Therefore, this piece seeks to identify the concept of patient-centred care, theories, and practices
tied to it via in-depth analysis of what it entails and its value, especially to nurses. This reflection
piece will employ Graham Gibb’s reflective model so as to almost wholly shed light on patient-
centred care. It will entail a well-drafted description, feelings evoked, evaluation, analysis,
conclusion, and an action plan to cement the whole concept.
Description
The little knowledge I had gathered from class teaching steered me to look into person-
centred care at great depth. In brief, it is a healthcare practice that entails taking care of patients
and in some cases, their families as well in ways deemed valuable and meaningful. Moreover, it
goes far and beyond listening, informing and overall involvement of patients in their care. It
places focus on meeting the healthcare needs of a patient with the overall goal of empowering
patients to be actively involved in their wellness. That is to say, patients establish a partnership
with healthcare practitioners. The practitioners then go forth to treat patients from a clinical
perspective whilst heeding to emotions, spiritual, financial, and spiritual states.
Patient-centred care (PCC) has taken a shift to be one of the key purposes for the
improvement of healthcare as a whole. Some of the responsibilities that come with person-
centred care including but not limited to the provision of care that is respective to or respectful
of, prioritizing patient preferences, prevention and promotion, values and needs, and guided

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clinical decisions. By accepting the core elements of patient-centred care, the nurses agree that
the concept has become key especially in the modern age of healthcare provision. When it comes
to the nursing discipline, the greater emphasis is on the patient-centred background. The
attention has shifted to care, background, effect, and fundamentals.
Feelings
The weeks of class have elicited a lot of emotions about nursing practice as a whole. The
study of person-centred care led me to the realization of the overwhelming needs when it comes
to healthcare provision. The study increased my level of curiosity especially about ways a variety
of things could be conjoined to achieve the best possible result as far as health care provision is
concerned. The learnings swept off my somewhat uninformed knowledge about patient care and
restored the value of the holistic approach and criticality that nurses employed in health care
delivery.
Evaluation
Most importantly, person-centred care is an addition to the knowledge of nursing practice since it
correlates with existing theories such as caring theory coined by Jean Watson. I gained an in-
depth understanding that nursing as a holistic practice, it entails caring guided by values, will,
knowledge, and commitments. Care is cemented when nurses and patients work as a team
towards recovery (Jo Delaney, 2018). Ideally, nursing practice is against making assumptions
about patients since it is stereotypic and could limit the patient assessment process that could
result to overlooking vital information (Schellinger, Anderson, Frazer, & Cain, 2018). For an
overall patient care process, it is a requirement for nurses to uphold the dignity and show respect
and exhibit an understanding of the value of meeting patient needs. This means that nurses not

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only need to place focus on treatment but also other key needs. Additionally, nurses have to
exhibit critical thinking whilst reflecting on their practice. However, similar approaches may not
work for every patient. In that light, a prior assessment of patient needs would be key for
planning the medical intervention for a successful outcome.
Analysis
Analysing through my learning experience, I came to the realization that healthcare
delivery model is shifting to a patient-centred approach. The applicability of the patient-centred
approach is dependent on the environment or population that receives the care. As an approach,
patient-centred care considers patients as the primary make up of healthcare delivery and
decisions tied to healthcare (Austrom et al., 2016). The approach is considered viable since it
goes far and beyond by measuring the overall value of personalized patient care by delegating
much power to the patient, unlike other approaches.
The Nursing and Midwifery Board highly regards person-centred care as a healthcare practice.
The board describes the concept by further shedding light on nurse’s competency and the process
which have to be fitting right into place so as to achieve a positive outcome from the approach.
The board further emphasizes on patients being prioritized before engaging a nurse’s reasoning
and compassion throughout the complexities of healthcare delivery (Australian Nursing
Federation, 2018). As aforementioned, healthcare delivery is somewhat complex but when it
comes to the practice of person-centred care, nurses stand to gain from the challenges that come
with the approach. Nurses gain experience, improvement in patient care outcomes, satisfaction in
health care provision, and firmness in the relationship between patients and nurses (Leanne,
2019). Overall, the analysis seeks to shed light on patient-centred care whilst stressing the need

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for top quality healthcare which patients deserve (Lor, Crooks, & Tluczek, 2016). Patients’
experiences and views may prove valuable when making enhancement efforts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the hours of study have added value to my knowledge bank as far as
patient-centred care is concerned. I am overly motivated to apply evidence-based knowledge and
clinical reasoning in nearly every nursing opportunity that comes my way. The understanding
that an individual’s health is shaped by varying modifiable and non-modifiable health-related
factors will be helpful in responding to illnesses, individual-environment interactions, and nurse
care process. I am also well aware of the fact that caring is tied to moral and attitudes towards
others. A nurse is well versed with taking care of a patient but a patient’s needs are known to
give varied viewpoints on the right way to achieve the desired health outcome. That is to say that
nurses ought to pinpoint a patient’s situation before embarking on healthcare delivery. In that
regard, I learned that in the near future, when it comes to patient-centred care, I will ensure that
patients participate in their own care for the desired patient-centred outcome. I will ensure that
patients are accorded support on the basis of their level of participation. I will ensure that a
health care team does not consist of only professionals who force their objectives and values,
instead, patients would also be at the heart of healthcare delivery.
Action Plan
Putting patients first is the hallmark of patient-centred care. The approach is committed to and
sets the pace for other phases of health care delivery (Kreindler, 2015). Therefore, there is need
to work on ways that could boost the approach. A well-orchestrated plan would deliver on the
health promise that prioritizes patients and other persons by improving the experiences of

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healthcare and health outcomes. The plan would entail gathering feedback on the contributory
factors to quality of care in various avenues of healthcare delivery (Molony, Kolanowski, Van
Haitsma, & Rooney, 2018). This will provide a broad understanding of the entire patient care
system in my future place of work so as to design ways of improving the care process. Not only
will this be helpful in establishing coordinated and consistent care processes but would also
ensure a safe and effective patient-centred care is achieved.

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References
Australian Nursing Federation. (2018). Codes and Guidelines. Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia, 1-11.
Austrom, M. G., Carvell, C. A., Alder, C. A., Gao, S., Boustani, M., & LaMantia, M. (2016).
Workforce development to provide person-centered care. Aging and Mental Health.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2015.1119802
Jo Delaney, L. (2018). Patient-centred care as an approach to improving health care in Australia.
Collegian.
Kreindler, S. A. (2015). The politics of patient-centred care. Health Expectations.
https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12087
Leanne, W. (2019). Patient-centred care is missing in action in Australia. Retrieved from
https://chf.org.au/blog/patient-centred-care-missing-action-australia.
Lor, M., Crooks, N., & Tluczek, A. (2016). A proposed model of person-, family-, and culture-
centered nursing care. Nursing Outlook. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2016.02.006
Molony, S. L., Kolanowski, A., Van Haitsma, K., & Rooney, K. E. (2018). Person-Centered
Assessment and Care Planning. Gerontologist.
Schellinger, S. E., Anderson, E. W., Frazer, M. S., & Cain, C. L. (2018). Patient Self-Defined
Goals: Essentials of Person-Centered Care for Serious Illness. Journal of Hospice and
Palliative Medicine.