Working around a patient, core concept of the patient-centered care with a focus on diabetes mellitus and associated chronic wounds; A review

Abstract

Management of chronic diseases is a challenging task in current medical practice and treatment of such conditions and their complications is not very straight forward as we deal with multiple clinical problems. This review article provides an overview of the core concept of patient-centered care, effects of diabetes mellitus (DM) on wound healing, and implication of the multidisciplinary team concept for such patients. The literature was searched using “wounds”, “chronic wound healing”, “multidisciplinary team and chronic wound healing” and “patient-centered care and wound healing” as keywords on PubMed as the main source of search. Every chronic disease can involve many health professionals at various stages. The patient-centered approach is a concept that is proving beneficial clinically. This concept considers patient as a center of the circle, and every facility is connected and based upon the patient’s needs. In this article, we have briefly explained implication of such multidisciplinary teams by considering DM management, with a focus on chronic wounds. DM is one of the systemic diseases which puts a significant financial as well as health quality related burden on health systems worldwide. Out of these complications, diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) and effects of DM on wound healing are extremely important. This clinically important concept of making “teams” to manage various chronic diseases should be investigated in various clinical settings. The data from further research should be analysed to standardize this globally for different categories of wound patients.