Patient Engagement and Patient Safety: Are We Missing the Patient in the Center?

Muhammad Hasan Abid,Muhammad Mohsin Abid,Iqbal Ratnani,Salim Surani

doi:10.7759/cureus.7048

Abstract

The global healthcare delivery paradigm shift calls for enhanced strategies to engage patients in delivering safer and high-quality healthcare. There still exists a gap area in a globally accepted measure for the person-centered care. Recent tri-institutional global quality reports from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAESM), World Bank Group, and Lancet Global Health Commission attempted to report the patient engagement measures used globally. We aim to understand the variation in these globally reported patient-centered care measures and highlight the recent proactive strategies to enhance patient engagement to improve patient safety.I

Highlights

BackgroundIt has been 18 years since Institute of Medicine in its 2001 seminal report Crossing the Quality Chasm recognized person-centered care as a domain of healthcare quality [1]
The Lancet Global Health Commission, in its report High-Quality Health Systems in the Sustainable Development Goals Era: Time for a Revolution, revealed that an average of 34% of people in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) reported poor user experience when came in contact with their respective healthcare systems [3]
The Promoting Respect and Ongoing Safety Through Patient Engagement Communication and Technology (PROSPECT) study concluded that implementation of a structured team communication and patient engagement program in the ICU was associated with a 30% reduction in adverse events and improved patient and care partner satisfaction [12]

Summary

Introduction

Patient and family engagement (‘patient engagement’ for simplicity) is defined as ‘patients, families, their representatives, and health professionals working in active partnership at various levels across the healthcare system (direct care, organizational design and governance, and policy making) to improve health and healthcare’ [5]. It merges patient activation (an individual’s knowledge, skills, ability and willingness to manage his/her own health and care) with interventions designed to increase activation and promote positive patient behavior [5]. The verdict is out with recent work on paying for relationship rather only the performance [18]; careful and kind care requiring unhurried conversations with patients and families [19]; and preserving the patient-physician relationship by balancing the medicine as humanitarian profession and healthcare as a competitive business [20]

Conclusions

Disclosures

Findings

Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care in America