Focusing Care on Individuals and Their Care Partners

Person- and care partner-centered care is a collaborative approach to planning and delivering clinical services. It represents a partnership between clinicians, individuals served, and their care partners. Each party is equally important in the relationship, and each party respects the knowledge, skills, and experiences that others must share (Baas, 2012; Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care, n.d.). This approach to care is used by both audiologists and speech-language pathologists.

Core concepts of person- and care partner-centered care include the following, based on core concepts described by Johnson et al. (2008).

Respect and dignity — Providers (a) honor the perspectives and choices of the person, and care partners and (b) incorporate the knowledge, values, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds of those individuals into service planning and provision.
Information sharing — Providers communicate with the person and their care partners and share information about assessment and treatment to encourage full participation in decision making.
Participation — Providers encourage the person and their care partners to participate in decision making to whatever degree they choose.
Collaboration — Providers include the person and their care partners in collaborating on an institution-wide basis (e.g., in policy and program development, evaluation, team collaboration, and service delivery).

Centering the person and their care partners requires the clinician to engage in effective cultural responsiveness. See ASHA’s Practice Portal page on Cultural Responsiveness.

The Clinician’s Role

When treating a person and their care partners, audiologists and speech-language pathologists provide training and counseling about communication, hearing, and swallowing disorders. This timely opportunity to educate people increases buy-in, cooperation, and generalization of skills.

Clinicians

invest time into learning about the culture and interpersonal relationships of the person and their care partners and
consider each individual’s social determinants of health.

Then, they use this information to select appropriate assessment tools and treatment strategies.

Cultural attributes vary across individuals. Also, support systems are dynamic and fluid—and treatment plans should remain flexible.

Benefits of Person- and Care Partner-Centered Care

The implementation of person- and care partner–centered care may require some initial time investment. Reasons for taking the time to do this (Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care, n.d.) might include the following:

to modify treatment approaches
to build relationships
to teach strategies that will help them actively participate in the service delivery process

This initial time investment will result in many benefits, including

improved clinical decision making that is based on better information;
a greater understanding of the person’s and their care partner’s strengths and needs;
a greater likelihood of increased adherence to clinical recommendations when the treatment plan is developed collaboratively;
more effective communication, which leads to fewer misunderstandings; and
better outcomes and greater satisfaction with services (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012).

References

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2012). Patient- and family-centered care and the pediatrician’s role. Pediatrics, 129(2), 394–404. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-3084

Baas, L. S. (2012). Patient- and family-centered care. Heart & Lung, 41(6), 534–535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrtlng.2012.08.001

Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care. (n.d.). What is patient- and family-centered care? https://www.ipfcc.org/

Johnson, B., Abraham, M., Conway, J., Simmons, L., Edgman-Levitan, S., Sodomka, P., Schlucter, J., & Ford, D. (2008). Partnering with patients and families to design a patient-and family-centered health care system: Recommendations and promising practices. Institute for Family-Centered Care and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. https://www.ipfcc.org/resources/PartneringwithPatientsandFamilies.pdf [PDF]