Benefits of Increasing Patient Engagement in Plan of Care

This presentation’s focus is implementing ways to engage patients in their own plan of care during hospitalization. Patient’s presenting their needs early on during a hospital stay has been shown to improve nurse-patient communication and overall engagement. When a patient has felt that his or her specific needs have been made aware to the nursing staff, one feels more like an individual rather than a bed number. The patient will become a more active member in his or her care which leads to better outcomes and satisfaction. The more comfortable and open a patient is with the nurse about his or her wants and needs, the better relationship they will have resulting in better care. This also allows the nurse to become a better advocate for the patient. Throughout gathering research, many articles were found to contain information regarding different methods to increase patient engagement. Three different randomized controlled trials were found and utilized to gather this information. These include, “Feasibility and early effectiveness of the Tell-us Card communication tool to Increase in-hospital patient participation: a cluster randomized controlled pilot study,” “Patient involvement in own rehabilitation after early discharge,” and “Effectiveness of a Decision Aid for Patients with Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Three main areas of interest that provide evidence of the benefits of improving patient engagement include implementing the use of a Tell-Us card, Coaching to Self-Care method, or the use of a decision aid. Throughout this presentation, these three methods will be highlighted along with the research articles implemented in this project. These methods will allow for more patient engagement during the nursing care plan