Patient-focused care

Abstract

A quantitative and qualitative study was conducted with 191 health professionals working in primary care during the initial stages of adopting a more patient-focused, multidisciplinary approach to care. Patient-focused care involves a radical analysis of the health professional's philosophy of care and a critical examination of current systems of practice by taking into account the holistic needs of patients. The community health professionals had a range of initial perceptions of what patient-focused care would mean to their practice or working environment. One in three of those surveyed believed that patient-focused care would be a threat to their status as professionals and 60% of the sample believed they were already providing a form of patient-focused care. There was resistance to working in a multidisciplinary team, with some health professionals commenting that they had little in common with staff belonging to other disciplines.

The significant change for many staff was the transition from being in a single disciplinary team to being part of a multidisciplinary team; this change may have a critical impact on the stress levels of the health professionals themselves. Almost half (49%) of the health professional sample said that they were either experiencing ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of job-related stress. Sixty-five per cent of staff attributed their stress to job-specific stressors. The most commonly reported stressors were difficulties with patients themselves (47%) and staffing problems (39%). The health professional sample tended to express the symptoms of stress in somatic terms, rather than describe the cognitive, emotional, or behavioural aspects of their stress. This finding has implications for the development of interventions to combat stress among health service employees who encounter significant changes to their organisation or to their systems of practice.

Key words:

• occupational stress
• patient-focused care
• organisational change