Person-Centered Care: Nursing Approach and Application

This essay delves into the concept of person-centered care, emphasizing its significance in nursing practice, particularly for patients with chronic illnesses and complex comorbid conditions. It explores the meaning of person-centered care, highlighting the importance of patient involvement, therapeutic communication, and collaborative management among healthcare professionals. The essay uses a case study of a 93-year-old woman, Ivy, who was involved in a motor vehicle accident, to illustrate the practical application of person-centered care principles. It examines how these principles, including developing a nursing care plan, providing emotional support, and embracing collaborative management, can be implemented to improve patient outcomes. Furthermore, the essay analyzes relevant research, such as the use of narrative inquiry, to underscore the value of understanding the patient's perspective and experiences in optimizing care. The conclusion reinforces the need for healthcare providers to prioritize person-centered care to enhance patient satisfaction and improve the overall quality of healthcare delivery. The essay also highlights the importance of integrating person-centered care at an organizational level and implementing strategies to facilitate its achievement. The essay references several sources to support the arguments.

Nursing
Student’s name:
Institutional:

PERSON-CENTERED CARE
1. Meaning of providing person-centered care
There is an increase in demand for health services all over the world despite limited
resources (Bryant, 2019). As people age, many health problems come up. Research shows that
person-centered care improves the health of people and to reduce the cost of the hospital bill
(Nielsen et al. 2014). Patient with chronic illnesses have reduced quality of life, impaired daily
activities; thus, they require a long-term plan of treatment. People living with chronic illness
have a problem in dealing with threats to their health. Most patients with chronic illnesses are
required to manage symptoms, physical exercise, medications to promote adherence and daily
monitoring (Chiauzzi et al. 2015). Research shows that for a patient to be adapted to illness,
there should be patient engagement on treatment. In current society, chronic patients and their
families are mainly their primary caregiver.
Person-centered care is an aspect where the patient is able to actively get involved in their
own medical treatment in collaboration with nurses, doctors and other medical practitioners
(Taylor et al. .2018). Person-centered care is only about giving the patient the ability to do
whatever they want, but it includes putting in place some considerations such as family
situations, values, norms, social life, and lifestyle. Care is individualized, and through working
together solution for patients is identified. Person-centered care requires medical professionals to
be compassionate, be able to make decisions by being able to things about things from a personal
point of view and being respectful (Entwistle et al. 2013).
Chronic patient-centered needs a clear understanding of the patient situation. It is important
to know and to discover patient worries, health behaviours, her expectation, previous experience

of how complications and symptoms were handled and their insight about the chronic disease.
Chronic patient-centered care involves attending to patient needs, worries and emotions (Stewart
et al. 2013).
For person-centered care to be successful, services need to be changed in such a way that is
flexible to meet patients’ needs in a manner that is best for them. This can work well when
families work together with health professionals to find the best way to provide care. Working
together with patient and family can occur on a one-one basis, this is where patient make an
important decision on their health and care, or it can occur on a collective basis where the patient
group or the public are involved in decisions of delivery of services to the patient
There are different aspects of the person-centered approach. This includes respecting
patients values, norms and putting them at the centre of care, working together, considering
patient needs and preferences, making the patient comfortable, both physically and emotionally,
involving family and friends and making sure there the services of care are available at any time
whenever needed by the patient. Patient-centered requires good communication skills this will
help create rapport and built trust between health professional and patient
The importance of person-centered care is that it helps in improving services available, help
people get the care they need when they require it, it makes people more active in taking care of
themselves, it encourages people to make a decision on their health, it helps people understand
the impact of comorbid conditions on people's health, for example, high blood pressure.
Preparing a chronic patient-centered depends on giving it a priority to the illness, and for that
reason, it should be included during medical education (Stewart et al. 2013).

2. How person-centered care will be underpinning theoretical basis of practice in care
chosen
Person-centered care is an important aspect of care delivery and is necessary is ensuring that
positive health outcomes are achieved (Parnell, 2014). As a nurse, I have to ensure that care
delivery is person-centered. The chosen case study involves Ivy, a 93-year-old lady and her
daughter, who was involved in a motor vehicle accident. She was a restrained front-seat
passenger. Her daughter was driving. The suspected included right knee injury, right forearm
fractures and significant chest injuries. Ivy has a past medical history of left TKR, hypertension
and hyperthyroidism. They live at home independently. On admission, she was given irbesartan.
The nursing care management of Ivy, therefore, should be person-centered.
Some of the practices that will lead to the achievement of a person-centered include
therapeutic communication, nursing care plan, embracing collaborative management, emotional
support and involvement of the patient in her care (Constand et al. 2014). Therapeutic
communication is an important aspect of nursing practice since it helps the client to be more
open concerning her health ad any other information required. To achieve therapeutic
communication, I will first establish a rapport with the patient and be emphatic so that she can
feel more comfortable having me around. Moreover, I will listen keenly to Ivy to ensure that I do
not miss any information from her. Clarifications, given feeding and honesty, are also other
aspects of therapeutic communication that I will also while caring for Ivy. The patient also needs
emotional support due to her condition. The daughter was also injured, which makes it even
more emotionally challenging for both of them. As a nurse, I will, therefore, need to provide the
client with emotional support throughout the management.

Moreover, I will develop a nursing care plan for Ivy. This will include an assessment of the
client individuals needs and developing nursing problems/diagnoses to be addressed. Once the
problems are identified, ‘SMART’ goals are set and proper interventions taken (Doenges et al.
2016). This will aid me in ensuring that I address the needs of the patient. The nursing care plan
is the most important tool for nurses. Therefore, it has to be made keenly. The patient has to be
involved when making decisions that concern her. This is because the patient has a right to
accept or decline medication. However, the patient should be given proper education and
information concerning her treatment so that she can make a proper decision that will result in
better health outcomes (Vahdat et al. 2014). I will involve Ivy in her management since this will
increase her cooperation throughout care, hence better outcomes.
Collaborative management is also another aspect of person-centered care (Koch, 2013). I
will embrace collaborative care while taking care of Ivy. The team may include nurses, doctors,
physiotherapist, social worker and a counsellor. This promotes the patient care since every
specialist involved will do his/her part of care with more expertise and moreover, they will be
able to identify more needs of the patient as they interact with her. Therefore, the patient’s need
will be met adequately.
3. Research related to person-centered care and application to the chosen case
A research that was done on "narrative inquiry as a research methodology exploring person-
centered care in nursing" argued that narrative inquiry is essential in nursing since it focuses
more on individuals' experiences of their sickness (Haydon et al. 2018). It considers 'what
matters' from the client point of view. The research finding outlined that in order to optimize
care, it is critical to find out what is important from the patients' point of view. The narrative is
most commonly used in education and sociology and has the ability to uncover what is vital to

the individual in their situation. Therefore, as a nurse, I believe that this can be applicable to the
care of the client in the case scenario. This is because, Ivy, as the patient, know what really
bothers her. She clearly knows her needs, and it will be important to consider her side of the
story. For example, if she states that she feels a lot of pain, then it will be important to consider
the issue as raised by her and be addressed accordingly.
This helps a lot to achieve patient satisfaction as compared to when the nurse only considers
her own assessment. It also helps the caregiver to capture important needs that matter and could
have been missed out. According to Haydon et al., 2018, a holistic approach to the patient illness
will embrace the client social and cultural experience of the illness, which aids in the provision
of care. The patient will also feel involved in her care which in turn makes her cooperate more
and hence better management.
In conclusion, person-centered care remains to be an efficient method, according to
evidenced-based researches, and there are still many research and advances made in relation to it.
All nurses and other healthcare staffs should, therefore, continue to provide person-centered care
to patients in order to promote patient satisfaction and healthcare delivery. Person-centered care
should also be embraced even in the organization level to make it more effective. Various
strategies should be put in place to aid in the achievement of person-centered care so that
healthcare delivery becomes much better.

Reference
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