Heart of the Matter
Creating optimal experiences in health and healthcare.
Person and Family-Centred Care
Listening to – and honouring – patient and family perspectives are at the heart of quality healthcare. The person-centred approach acknowledges the uniqueness of every individual, and their preferences around dignity, respect, and coordinated and personalised care. Optimal experiences can be achieved by transparent discussion, shared decision making and by understanding who and what matters to each person. Appreciating these areas can facilitate improvements in a range of health and social care contexts.
Always Events
‘Always Events’ refer to a clear set of experiences and behaviours that are so important to patients, such that healthcare providers should always deliver on. By actively engaging with patients and their families, localised Always Events can be generated, which can then be linked to existing or new measurable care systems or processes. They form the basis of spreading improvements in health and care processes, at individual, care-team, organisational and system-wide levels.
Innovating for Improvement
Care teams from across the NHS in Scotland convened in Glasgow to begin the 
design and testing of the ‘Always Events’ concept. As well as a Quality Improvement learning session, the day involved a variety of discussions and presentations. Care teams also constructed potential Always Events from previously locally gathered data.
Competitively fund
ed by The Health Foundation, the work is part of the ‘Innovating for Improvement’ programme (Twitter: #THFInnovate), which is supporting project teams throughout the UK to test and develop innovative ideas and approaches to improving health care delivery.
References
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2014). Always Events. Retrieved from http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Tools/AlwaysEventsGettingStartedKit.aspx
NHS Education for Scotland. (2016). “Always Events” to put patients and service users at the heart of care. Retrieved June 23, 2016, from http://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/newsroom/media-releases/always-events-to-put-patients-and-service-users-at-the-heart-of-care.aspx
The Health Foundation. (2014). Person-centred care made simple. London: Health Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.health.org.uk/publication/person-centred-care-made-simple
The Health Foundation. (2015). Designing and testing “always event” and person-centredness concepts in multiple care settings. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://www.health.org.uk/programmes/innovating-improvement/projects/designing-and-testing-%E2%80%98always-event%E2%80%99-and-person
Copyright
Copyright © Nancy El-Farargy, 2016.
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