Question

• Describe a time in your practice or in your life experiences where the patient was brought in as a collaborator in their care, OR not brought in as a collaborator in their care and how did that affect the plan of care and/or their outcomes.
• What opportunities exist for us to be sure we're bringing patient preferences and values into the conversation in a meaningful and intentional way?

200 words

Answer 1

Ans) Patient safety experts agree that communication and teamwork skills are essential for providing quality health care. When all clinical and nonclinical staff collaborate effectively, health care teams can improve patient outcomes, prevent medical errors, improve efficiency and increase patient satisfaction.

- Three simple ways hospitals can engage patients in their care:
Educate patients through verbal and written communication.
Encourage patients to ask questions.
Encourage feedback.

If patients not involved in plan of care then:

- Miscommunication

- Health care professional will take all call for care or they will not be confident as gaining patients cooperation will help decisions easy.

- No patient satisfaction as one way process.

- Time consuming

To improve the quality of care they provide, doctors should understand their patients' preferences.

- However, this raises many challenges for doctors. Practical concerns include time pressures and difficulties in eliciting preferences from patients who may be hesitant to make treatment decisions. These are compounded by a deficit of appropriate information to support patients' decisions.

- Doctors may not have the appropriate interpersonal skills, particularly for communicating risk. Medical uncertainty, deficiencies in individual doctors' knowledge, and the highly variable ability of patients to understand and remember clinical information mean that risk communication is often inadequate to support patients in making informed decisions.

- Some doctors may wish to uphold the imbalance of power between themselves and their patients, which may make patients reluctant to share their preferences.

- Inequalities in health care may be perpetuated or exacerbated if these affect patients' preferences or the extent to which doctors seek to inform or understand them. There are also challenges to be overcome if patients express preferences that contradict those of their doctors or guidelines.

- Despite these challenges, many doctors are committed to understanding patients' preferences. Innovative research is being undertaken to find solutions to these problems.

- The imaginative use of different sources of information, together with evidence based decision aids and decision analysis, are likely to be useful.