Person-Centredness and Fundamentals of Care - Dancing with Beauty Rather than Fighting Ugliness.
The fundamentals of care have re-emerged as an important consideration in nursing following a period when these role elements were predominantly "delegated tasks" delivered by other (usually unregistered/unregulated) members of the health and social care team. Contemporary critiques of nursing highlight the technical focus of nursing at the expense of its caring function. Person-centred nursing theory offers a way of reinstating the value of fundamental care as a core part of providing holistic nursing to persons as well as highlighting the importance of the nursing role in coordinating healthcare services in ways that are consistent with a person's beliefs and values. This paper argues that a focus on person-centredness enables the core function of nurses as providers and coordinators of holistic person-centred fundamental care to be revalued. It highlights the importance of nurses being clear about "what matters" in caring practices and suggests that nurses adopting a person-centred approach can achieve effective care coordination through the lens of the fundamentals of care. In reading this paper, a greater understanding of person-centredness in the context of the fundamentals of care can be achieved.
Head of the Division of Nursing and Head of QMU Graduate School, School of Health Sciences, Queen Margaret University (QMU), East Lothian, Scotland, UK.
Brendan
B
McCormack
D006801:Humans; D024802:Nurse's Role; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology; D009729:Nursing; D009742:Nursing Theory; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration