Question

What are some ethical and legal implications of patient-centered care?

Answer 1

A Patient-centered care is rooted into a strong relationship between patients and their doctors. They know one another, trust one another and work together to find the best course of treatment for the patient. A Patient-centered care empowers patients instead of making decision for them and allows the patients to access the medicine and services that they need unlike one-size-fits-all policies. However, from healthcare's perspective it comes with an ethical principle of autonomy where the provider must considers patients' cultural values, norms, individual preferences, family condition and standard of living. The legal implications of patient-centered care includes respect and encourage patient's confidentiality, informed consent and prevent any form of medical negligence in their treatment.There are also some challenges that healthcare professionals face while working for patient-centered care.The Patient decision-making ability, alternative decision making when patient's advance directive is not available and the patient's right to refuse a critical treatment are some of the challenges among them. Just like the mentioned challenges, there are also some ethical dilemmas that provider experience in Patient-centered care like whether to be more concerned about meeting the desires of individual patients or about addressing the social determinants of health. Another dilemma includes whether a patient-centred care mean agreeing to what patients want even if we know as there provider that it can not be considered best for their health.