Promoting patient centred care

  1. Summary
  2. Creating respectful fair and compassionate workplaces
  3. Promoting patient centred care
  4. Helping to tackle discrimination
  1. Championing fair and inclusive leadership
  2. Supporting continuity of care and safe delegation
  3. Making your updated standards easier to navigate

Paragraphs have been brought into Good medical practice from existing guidance on Decision making and consent. This includes:

  • ‘You must listen to patients and encourage an open dialogue about their health, asking questions to allow them to express what matters to them’ (paragraph 29)
  • ‘You should check patients’ understanding of the information they’ve been given, and do your best to make sure they have the time and support they need to make informed decisions if they are able to’ (paragraph 31).

A new section ‘Caring for the whole patient’ encourages doctors to ‘support patients in caring for themselves’ (paragraph 38). Doctors should ‘ask patients about any other care or treatment they are receiving…and check that any care or treatment…[they] propose, provide or prescribe is compatible’ (paragraph 39).

There’s also a new ‘should’ paragraph to review medications regularly ‘to check that the medications continue to meet the patient’s needs and are optimised for them’, and doctors should ‘consider the overall impact of the patient’s treatments, and whether the benefits outweigh any risk of harm’ (paragraph 40).

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