The many roles of families in family-centered care--part V. Interview by Deborah Dokken.

This article, the fifth of six in a series on roles for family members in family-centered care, focuses on the role of parents as educators of clinicians in the health care system. Two interviews highlight this role. The director of family services at a pediatric hospital, a parent of a child who suffered with a chronic illness, offers suggestions for institutions wanting to further develop this key role. This includes involving patient and family advisors at the "front end" of any initiative or new project; identifying champions (clinical staff, administrators, and patients/family members) for these roles within the institution; preparing family members for the educator role; following-up with thanks and feedback; and tracking successes of projects in which patient and family advisors participate. The father interviewed in this article describes the sense of fulfillment he experiences from teaching health care providers about child and family needs and the emotional side of care. He urges all parents to recognize the important education they can offer professionals when they both ask questions and share about their own child and family.

Patient- and Family-Centered Care in the Preoperative Setting: Simulation Cases Featuring Standardized Patients for Anesthesia Residents.

INTRODUCTION: Evidence links patient-centered care to improvements in allocation of health care resources, patient satisfaction, chronic disease self-management, morbidity, and mortality. Support from families, too, can improve patients' health and well-being. However, patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) in the preoperative setting is challenging due to short-term relationships with patients, time constraints, and lack of training. METHODS: This module uses simulations with standardized patients. Groups of residents are divided into pairs, and each resident in a pair alternately participates in, or observes via live camera feed, a simulation case. The pair participates in both debriefing sessions. Two simulation cases are run. The first features a Jehovah's Witness who wants lifesaving blood but does not want her accompanying daughter to know. Despite excruciating pain, analgesia is being withheld because surgery consent has not been obtained. The second features a patient with HIV who does not want her accompanying pastor to know. The operating room nurse calls for a resident to bring her to surgery, but the patient wants to talk to her mother, who has yet to arrive. The purpose of the curriculum is for anesthesia residents to apply PFCC when having difficult preoperative conversations with patients and their families and obtaining anesthesia consent. RESULTS: Participants rated the training environment, faculty, debriefing, clinical application, and contribution of standardized patients highly. Participants' perceived self-efficacy for each core principle of PFCC improved postsimulation compared to presimulation. DISCUSSION: We believe this curriculum can contribute to improvement in PFCC and subsequent improvement in the quality and safety of health care.

Patient- and Family-Centered Care: A Primer.

Patient- and family-centered care is a model of providing care in which the patient and family are partners with the provider and care team. A resurgence of interest in patient- and family-centered care is due, in part, to increasing consumerism in health care and the linking of reimbursement to the patient experience. Individual radiologists, practices, enterprises, and radiology professional societies have been engaged with patient- and family-centered care in varying degrees for many years. Understanding the roots and evolution of this care model will encourage further application of these principles in radiology.