The Environment of Care Model: a paradigm shift in comprehensive breast care

Abstract

The delivery of comprehensive breast care seems to be undergoing a paradigm shift driven by advances in technology, interprofessional collaboration and patient dissatisfaction with interruptions in care. This paradigm shift includes the emergence of new models of care that optimize the use of embedded radiology services and encourage greater interprofessional collaboration. This paper briefly reviews the three drivers (advances in technology, expectations regarding interprofessional collaboration and patient dissatisfaction with interrupted care) underlying the paradigm shift in comprehensive breast care as well as introduces the environment of care model, which describes the proximity of radiology services and interprofessional collaboration between the Women’s Wellness Clinic (WWC) and Radiology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute (KCI) – both based in the United States. In addition, this model is proposed as a way to facilitate improved patient satisfaction and early appropriate referral. Finally, plans for evaluating the effectiveness of this model are presented.

• Communication
• comprehensive breast care
• interprofessional collaboration

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Andrea Rogers-Snyr for her valuable assistance with literature search.

Declaration of interest

Dr. Chism receives royalties for her textbook published with Jones and Bartlett publishing entitled The Doctor of Nursing Practice: A Guidebook for Role Development and Professional Issues. Dr. Chism also served on Hologic Advisory Board (not mentioned in the article). Dr. Chism also provided women's health consultation to Gore Consulting Group.

None of these are a conflict related to content of article.