Patients as Partners in Quality Improvement Programs - Essay Sample

Introduction

The quality of care offered to patients is very important in the healthcare system. One way of improving the quality of healthcare is by engaging the patients in the provision of care. Patient engagement entails involving the patients, their families or representatives when the healthcare professionals deliver services to them at various levels in the healthcare system. When actively engaged, patients help in the improvement of the quality of care that the health practitioner provides. Patient safety is an outcome-dependent issue that focuses on the patient being free of adverse outcomes during the reception of healthcare (Han et al., 2013). Hence, the engagement between the patent and the health profession is key to the improvement of the quality of healthcare and patient safety. Although the approach to healthcare had over the years been personalized, today it has evolved to patient-centered care where healthcare professionals collaborate with patients, families, and representatives in the quality improvements programs.

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Patient engagement is a perfect description of the type of care that the patient and family-centered care seeks to provide. While the patient engagement seeks to connect the patients, family and their relatives or representative I provision of care, patient-and-family-centered care is focused on collaborating with such people in improving the health care services provided to patients. The health care practitioners partners with patients in ensuring respect, dignity, participation, sharing of information, and collaboration to ensure patients receive quality care (Reinertsen, Bisagnano & Pugh, 2008). When treated with respect and dignity patients feel satisfied ad this coupled with excellent treatment and a continuum of other factors creates greater overall satisfaction. Health care providers ensure continuous communication and sharing of information with patients to ensure that they feel part of the care being provided to them. However, the information given by the health care provider must be accurate and unbiased.

In a patient partner initiative, the patient is considered in various activities and initiatives that aid in the improvement of healthcare services (Han et al., 2013). As a result, the patients are considered as fully fledged members of the healthcare team. This approach to improving the quality of health care is based on three premises namely, patients suffering from chronic illnesses are obliged to provide most of the care by their own means, secondly, the patient suffering the chronic diseases acquire with time, an experiential knowledge significant for enhancement of self managed care and for complementing the scientific knowledge possessed by the healthcare practitioners. Thirdly, the decisions that the healthcare professional make when diagnosing and dispensing medicines to the patient is dependent on the patient's life history and plan (Han et al., 2013). The intended treatment and the patient's life plan must complement for quality of care to be improved.

Collaboration between healthcare practitioners and the patient, family, and representatives are significantly useful in designing programs and policies for use in the development and education of professionals. Proper consultations with patients, families, and representatives help the professionals identify the issues affecting the patients and hence work towards finding the solution. When the right solutions are found, the professionals are able to deliver the services that fully address the patient conditions and needs (Reinertsen et al., 2008). Addressing the needs of the patient is a step towards the improvement of care delivery and satisfying the patients. Healing starts with patient satisfaction, hence having a satisfied patient is a good start to ensure that there is good progress towards healing.

In a place where the patient and the health practitioners collaborate effectively, a framework and strategy for transforming the organizational culture ensues. In a transformed organizational culture, the healthcare professional experience better experience of care and is hence able to enhance the efficiency, safety, and quality of care delivered to the patients.

It has been established that in healthcare facilities where the patient and families have been actively involved in the improvement team, outstanding improvement results have been experienced (Reinertsen et al., 2008). This indicates that integrating the families and the patient in leadership positions, they contribute highly to wisdom and power influence. As a result, their experience aid in the redesign and improvement of the care systems. When incorporated in the leadership positions of the improvement teams, patients and families contribute intensively as an agent of transformational change and impact highly in quality of care systems.

In another study, it was found that engaging patients in improvement plans, strategies, and high-level strategies has immense benefits. According to Han et al. (2013), patients who are robustly involved in the various aspects of healthcare practice such as designing effective patient engagement strategies have a positive impact o the interactions between the medical staff and the families, and patients. In this regard, such interactions and involvement ensure that the relationship between the healthcare professional and the families and patient improve and become stronger. In such an environment patients feel that the health care facility empowers them and that they are being appreciated as active partners in care provision. This increases their satisfaction level as well as the quality of health care services.

Conclusion

In conclusion, patient engagement, collaboration, and involvement in the healthcare system are very important and should be conducted in all the healthcare facilities.

References

Han, E., Scholle, S., Morton, S., Bechtel, C., & Kessler, R. (2013). Survey Shows That Fewer Than A Third Of Patient-Centered Medical Home Practices Engage Patients In Quality Improvement. Health Affairs, 32(2), 368-375. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2012.1183

Reinertsen J.L., Bisognano M., Pugh (2008). Seven Leadership Leverage Points for Organization-Level Improvement in Health Care (Second Edition). IHI Innovation Series white paper. Cambridge, MA: Institute for Healthcare Improvement.