person-centred care
person-centred care
A popular term for healthcare and social services which reflect the individual’s unique preferences, values and needs, identified and agreed upon in partnership with the physician. Under Person-Centred Care, Standard 2 of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Older People, people should be treated as individuals and receive appropriate and timely care that meets their needs.For people with learning disabilities, such care entails life planning based around the principles of social disability. The importance of a Person-Centred approach has also been reinforced with its inclusion in the NSF for Long-Term Conditions 2005; with the movement towards dignity in a hospital setting; and an increasing awareness of its importance when working with people with dementia, concentrating on what they can do rather than what they are not able to do. The DH, health and social care agencies increasingly prefer “individual” or “person” rather than traditional, organisational terms such as customer, client, service user or (when appropriate) patient.