LP 2: Foundational knowledge - Promote interprofessional teams to deliver patient-centred care

Promote interprofessional teams to deliver patient-centred care

A single health worker would likely struggle to deliver integrated, comprehensive, patient-centred care for all people. Instead, interprofessional, collaborative healthcare teams (including primary care providers, nurse managers, community-based workers, laboratory, radiology and pharmacy technicians, and specialists) are best-skilled to deliver integrated, people-centred care, which the WHO envisions as essential for ensuring health for all. Patient-centred care is aligned with and responsive to client and population health needs, and can be delivered by an interprofessional team through the following approaches, also shown in the figure below (WHO, 2015):

• Providing collaborative, coordinated, and accessible care;
• Focusing care on physical comfort and emotional well-being;
• Considering preferences, values, traditions, and socioeconomic conditions;
• Encouraging family involvement;
• Providing timely and transparent information for shared decision-making;
• Aligning leadership and management to patient-centred goals.

Patient-centred care may be most effectively achieved in marginalised and underserved communities through a health workforce representing and coming from the community. Health workers can provide more acceptable care when they demonstrate linguistic, cultural, and gender competence. This reinforces the WHO recommendations for education: to recruit health professional students from rural backgrounds and locate schools in these settings (WHO, 2015).