Healthcare professionals and patients tend to agree that being treated with dignity and respect is a fundamental attribute of good care. However, measuring outcomes in PCC can prove challenging for researchers. Many of the standard methods of measuring the effectiveness of the work of nurses don’t really reflect the complexity of what’s going on in practice. This is especially the case when attempting to evaluate person-centred nursing.

Search the nursing literature for research providing evidence for the effectiveness, or otherwise, of PCC. Do you think what you have found provides a sufficiently strong evidence base for PCC?

Your nursing practice is required to be evidence-based (NMC 2015). Healthcare professionals and patients tend to agree that being treated with dignity and respect is a fundamental attribute of good care. Promoting a service-user’s dignity is clearly important, but not always achieved in practice. There are many practical lessons to be learned from previous mistakes (Baillie 2007).

Training medical staff to provide PCC approaches in clinical consultations helps them to develop their communication skills, but there is mixed evidence about whether these approaches promote patient satisfaction or health outcomes (Dwamena et al. 2012). Although PCC does not seem to have a strong body of supporting empirical evidence, there have been many studies which have supported the idea that PCC is effective in improving the wellbeing of people suffering with dementia (Li & Porock 2014). Most evidence in support of PCC approaches tends to focus upon communication (Constand et al. 2014). Other considerations included improved uptake of services, and compliance with treatment, when shared decision-making through PCC was implemented (Wiley 2014).

Measuring outcomes in person-centred care can be challenging. Many of the standard methods of measuring the effectiveness of the work of nurses don’t really reflect the complexity of what’s going on in practice. This is especially the case when attempting to evaluate person-centred nursing. The exception to this is with the patient’s expectations of their nurse, which are often in alignment with person-centred practice and its capacity to enhance holistic care (Binnie & Titchen 1999).

References

• Baillie, L. (2007). The impact of staff behaviour on patient dignity in acute hospitals. Nursing Times, 103(34), 30–31.

• Binnie, A., and Titchen, A. (1999). Freedom to practise: The development of patient-centred nursing. Oxford: Elsevier.

• Constand, M. K., MacDermid, J. C., Dal Bello-Haas, V., and Law, M. (2014). Scoping review of patient-centred care approaches in healthcare. BMC Health Services Research, 14, 271.

• Dwamena, F., Holmes-Rovner, M., Gaulden, C. M., Jorgenson, S., Sadigh, G., Sikorskii, A., . . . Olomu, A. (2012). Interventions for providers to promote a patient-centred approach in clinical consultations. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 12. Article No: CD003267.

• Li, X., and Porock, D. (2014). Resident outcomes of person-centred care in long-term care: A narrative review of interventional research. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 51(10), 1395–1415.

• Nursing and Midwifery Council. (2015). The Code for nurses and midwives. London: NMC.

• Wiley, J., Westbrook, M., Greenfield, J. R., Day, R. O., and Braithwaite, J. (2014). Shared decision-making: The perspectives of young adults with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Patient Preference and Adherence, 8, 423–435.