Patient‐centred care through a broader lens: Supporting patient autonomy alongside moral deliberation

Abstract

Patient-centred care (PCC) is an essential component of high-quality healthcare and shared decisionmaking is its cornerstone. Yet, integrating the principles of PCC into healthcare practice is not always straightforward and shared decisionmaking can be complicated and ethically demanding. While ethicists and academics routinely debate moral aspects of clinical care, such discussion among clinicians is less overt. In this paper, we use Emmanuel et al.'s deliberative model to provide a practical framework for considering ethical aspects of PCC and shared decision-making. The model encourages us to appreciate PCC through a broader lens and consider patient autonomy alongside other moral obligations such as justice and the equitable distribution of finite resources. The model can be used by healthcare providers, patients and caregivers to facilitate dialogue and moral deliberation regarding the merit of their preferences and values; in this way, individualised care can be delivered without compromising other important ethical obligations.

Mental Health Care Professionals’ Appraisal of Patients’ Use of Web-Based Access to Their Electronic Health Record: Qualitative Study

“…Individual mental health care professionals and organizations as a whole need to determine what patient-centered care means to them and how they want to deal with the moral dilemmas associated with patient access to the EHR. Communal appraisal can be arranged by organizing a moral deliberation, one of the ways to organize a dialog about the moral dilemmas of patient autonomy versus patient vulnerability [ 33 ].…”