Family-Centered Care

Overview

Family-centered care offers a new way for patients, their families and health care practitioners to relate to each other.

Traditionally, health care professionals made most, if not all, decisions about care and treatments while patients and families often stood on the sidelines. The family-centered philosophy recognizes families play a vital role in ensuring the health and well-being of their members. Family-centered care also promotes the full participation by patients and their families in the planning, delivery and evaluation of health care services.

Family-centered care is slowly catching on. First presented in the late 1980s, the idea has attracted a growing number of converts, according to Jan Hanson, director of research and evaluation at the Institute for Family-Centered Care, a non-profit organization based in Bethesda, Md.

Though family-centered care began in children's hospitals and pediatric units, it has spread to cancer units, maternity departments, mental health facilities and entire hospitals that cater to adults, says Hanson. A similar movement is called patient-centered care.

While some individual health care professionals already practice “family-centered care,” advocates believe wide-ranging, systemic changes are needed before family-centered care becomes an accepted and widespread practice. Doctors, nurses and other health professionals must be trained differently. Families and patients must learn new skills. And institutions must change their policies.

Shifting to a family-centered approach is a complex task. To explore the issues surrounding the shift to family-centered care, a diverse group of educators, health care professionals, social workers and others met June 22-23, 1998 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. The conference was moderated by Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore and attended by President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Here are the highlights of the key topic areas covered at the conference, along with related web sites, research highlights, best practices and strategies and public policy approaches.

General Principles of Family-Centered Care

  • Recognizes the vital role families play in ensuring health and well-being of family members
  • Promotes sharing of information and collaboration among patients, families and health care staff
  • Acknowledges that emotional, social and developmental support are integral components of health care
  • Encourages and facilitates parent-to-parent support
  • Assumes families – even those living in difficult circumstances – bring important strengths to their health care experiences
  • Empowers individuals and families and fosters independence
  • Supports family-care giving and decision making
  • Respects patient and family choices, their values, beliefs and cultural backgrounds
  • Provides care that is culturally competent and provides for low literacy skills
  • Involves patients and families in planning, delivery and evaluation of health care services

Sources: Institute for Family-Centered Care, Bethesda, MD. and the Nathan B. Cummings Foundation

Key web sites

Institute for Family-Centered Care -- A non-profit organization, the institute works to advance the understanding and practice of family-centered care. The institute serves as a resource for both members and health care practitioners. This site shares information, facilitates problem-solving and promotes dialogue among individuals and organizations working toward family-centered care.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation -- The foundation held a forum June 5, 1996 exploring questions around family-centered care. This site offers a synthesis of the issues, concerns and ideas that emerged from that meeting.

Health Care Reengineering for the Military Health Systems -- This site offers a list of questions to help your facility institute a patient-centered and family-centered approach.

Association for the Care of Children's Health -- This is a multidisciplinary organization of healthcare providers, family members, facility designers, teachers, child life specialists, chaplains, therapists, librarians, researchers, hospitals and others.

Kaiser Permanente -- This site offers a model for family-centered, community-based, culturally competent managed care plans through a collaborative relationship between a parent-directed family resource center and Kaiser Permanente.

Research highlights - downloadable as a pdf file