Patient-centered care has transformed the landscape of healthcare delivery. Hospitals and health centers are shifting away from the traditional care delivery model in which clinicians prescribe the same treatment for patients with similar conditions or diagnoses. The new patient-centered model encourages a strong patient-clinician partnership, better communication and collaboration among the care givers, and treatment options based on the patient’s unique concerns, preferences, and values.
Read on to discover how collaborative healthcare education boosts patient-centered care.
1. Preparing tomorrow’s workforce
Today’s healthcare students are tomorrow’s clinicians: it’s essential that they develop the skills they need to excel on a multidisciplinary care delivery team before they ever reach the hospital floor. And in order to maintain high standards of patient-centered care, hospitals have issued hiring requirements for doctors, nurses, PAs, physical therapists, and other clinicians with advanced skills, thus putting pressure on healthcare education programs to provide practical skill development opportunities.
2. Encouraging continual learning
Many hospitals are looking to simulation to meet their collaborative healthcare education goals and promote patient-centered care. Teams of clinicians can meet for a realistic, in-situ simulation activity  to develop their care delivery skills without ever having to leave the hospital floor. Collaboration and communication are enhanced when clinicians learn to work effectively with other members of their real life team.
3. Reducing patient readmission rates
Collaborative healthcare education helps close communication gaps and reduce ongoing patient care problems, including misdiagnosis. When a patient is misdiagnosed or given the wrong medications, there’s a chance they’ll need to be readmitted– at a high cost both to themselves and the medical facility. When practitioners increase collaboration, patients receive effective treatment the first time.
4. Enhancing multidisciplinary teamwork
In traditional hospital care settings, communication regarding patient care often exists in silos, with some parties receiving only partial or incorrect information. But when clinicians from different disciplines work as teams, it’s easier to form a more comprehensive view of patient care. Collaborative healthcare education brings clinicians together to develop a better understanding of the patient’s needs.
5. Improving patient outcomes
The ultimate goal of all medical and healthcare professionals should be to provide patients with the best possible care. Collaborative healthcare education make this easier to achieve. Instead of individual practitioners having to take turns when caring for a patient, they work as a team from the start. This patient-centered care has positive, lasting results.
Educating for patient-centered care
The IOM (Institute of Medicine) defines patient-centered care as: “Providing care that is respectful of, and responsive to, individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” Collaborative healthcare education can help improve patient-centered care throughout the healthcare delivery spectrum—and it begins with the establishment of an effective interprofessional education (IPE) curriculum.