The Leader’s Role in Assuring Person and Family Centered Care

The role of the leader in promoting person and family centered care is to create the systems, processes and structures for providing care that fully engages the person and family in the design, implementation and evaluation of health care.  In addition to the above responsibilities, the Joint Commission (2009, p.3) notes: “…it is the leaders who establish the organization’s culture through their words, expectations for action, and behavior – a culture that values high-quality, safe patient care, responsible use of resources, community service, and ethical behavior; or a culture in which these goals are not valued.” 

This responsibility may be one of the most important for leaders to undertake and yet it can be the most difficult.  It requires unwavering commitment, redirection of resources, massive cultural change and a relentless reinforcement of the message.   This session will highlight some of these challenges, review a model for building the case for pursuing this course of action and securing organizational commitment, and offer several concrete strategies for creating environments that are person and family centered.  Additional benefits of this work, if done well, is that it also can result in increased staff satisfaction and engagement and reduced costs.