Answer

The Patient-Centered Care Competency

The nursing society has ensured quality health services by practicing patient-centered care. Patient centeredness is indispensable for the provision of quality care without conflicting interests between the providers and the patients. Epstein & Street (2011) opine that patient-centered care should emphasize the relationships between clinicians, patients (as well as their families), and healthcare systems with an objective of helping patients to take active roles in consultations (p. 101). Nursing has enhanced the active role of patients in decisions concerning their treatment options and care planning. Nursing has also implemented some changes that enhance involvement of patients.

The first change that nursing has made to ensure patient satisfaction with patient-centered care is the coordination of the caregivers. Inter-professional communication and relation is significant in ensuring that all the needs of the patient are apprehended and addressed across various clinical settings. Bowman & Neale (2014) posit that team culture and characteristics such as care coordination are important for providing patient-centered care (p. 170). The coordination is important so that every staff member is considered a caregiver and this is important for all the healthcare team members to give the interests of the patients a priority. The teamwork is best described with the combination of the model used. Nurses have implemented the core team approach that pairs a nurse to a physician. According to Sinsky, Sinsky, Althaus, & Thiltgen (2010), the core team model comprises of a physician working with 1.5-2 nurses and the team performs majority of patient management and contact to reduce handoffs, prevent information loss, effort redundancy, and conflicting communications (p. 966). Therefore, nurses should work within well-defined teams pairing them with specific physicians to improve coordination of care. The coordination is also necessary for the family members of the patients. Nursing has encouraged the consideration of friends and families of patients as part of the core team. Families and friends can provide emotional support to patients and help patients apprehend clinical instructions.

It is also important to empower patients to ensure they make well-informed decisions on matters concerning their healthcare. Nursing has focused on patient education and appropriate documentation to ensure all patients are empowered to play active role in making decision on their healthcare plans. Bowman & Neale (2014) argue that the teaching sites where patients were educated had better management of chronic diseases as well as patient-centered characteristics such as problem solving, patient activation, and coordination of care (p. 170). Therefore, the nursing action to ensure patient empowerment has enabled free information and knowledge sharing among and between nurses, physicians, patients, and other care providers. The documentations are also essential in ensuring patient-centered care. Nursing has ensured proper documentation and healthcare data sharing across different clinical settings using health information technology systems. Patient-centered care requires all the care providers to access patient healthcare data more easily. Epstein & Street (2011) opine that electronic health record promotes patient-centered care when it strengthens the patient-doctor relationship, promotes communication in healthcare settings, facilitates patient’s involvement in their care (p. 101). Nursing has encouraged infrastructural improvements in clinical settings that can enhance patients’ personal experiences during care. Facilities such as electronic health records improve communication that is essential for patient-focused care. Therefore, all healthcare professionals must ensure they have adequate facilities to empower their patients to have better clinical experiences.

Nursing is noble profession that entails wholehearted provision of service to humanity and nurses have employed humane skills and attitudes to provide patient-centered care. Epstein & Street (2011) assert that healthcare providers have changed from the authoritative model to partnership model of engaging patients in consultations using mindfulness, collaborative, empathetic, and informative skills (p. 101). Nurses show concern for the patients they care for to provide them with care based on their clinical setting. The empathetic skills would also enable nurses to accept patients’ ideas while nurses ensure patients have accurate details about their health using their informative skills. The vigor of the nurses to provide humanistic services ensures transparency that is the necessary in providing care.

In summary, nursing has incredibly changed in light of encouraging patient-centered care. The reforms are aimed at empowering patients to take active roles in making decisions concerning their healthcare plans. Patient education has been very helpful for nurses to empower patients as well as the profound use of technologies such as electronic health records to enhance communication and data sharing. Therefore, all nurses must have skills and competencies to be more educative, informative, and supportive to their patients.