Person Centered Medical Education: North American Approaches

Abstract

Person-centered care is regaining importance in North America. The concepts of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s) is re-focusing attention on the need for the person to be at the center of the healthcare system. Strategies to teach person-centered care are aimed at gaining a deeper appreciation of the life story of the person seated across from the physician in the examination room. These strategies include active listening, providing praise, direct observation through videotaping and shadowing, role playing during Observed Structured Clinical Evaluations (OSCE’s), narrative medicine, motivational interviewing and seeing patients as teachers. All of these strategies are aimed at deepening the doctor-patient relationship, humanizing the doctor-patient interaction and returning the joy of being a physician with decreasing physician burnout.