Throughout your time as a doctor, patients will be at the core of everything you do and therefore the care you provide must place the patient at the forefront of your decision-making.
Given that patient-centred care is a key principle, it is no surprise that it is a hot topic for interviews, so taking time to understand how patient-centred care is carried out is key to ensuring you excel in interviews. This guide will help you understand what you need to know and how to approach an interview question relating to this.
Written by Ayma Ahmed
What is Patient-Centred Care?
Patient-centred care is all about ensuring that you treat your patients with respect and dignity, ensuring that they play an important role in their own decision-making (respecting their consent and autonomy).
This means that you, as a doctor, explain the treatments and options available to the patient and use this information to help support the patient to make their own decisions regarding their health. This is important to maintain in accordance with the Core Values of the NHS, which emphasise the quality of a patient’s experience in care rather than just getting the job done.
It’s not only in regards to shared decision-making but also on a wider scale. The NHS aims to always ensure that the services best support the patients it provides care. This wider-scale patient-centred care can be implemented in a number of ways, from carrying out clinical audits to gaining patient feedback on the services we provide.
Why is Patient Centred Care Important?
Why should we adopt patient-centred care? There are a number of reasons why patient-centred care is important.
One such example is that patients are more likely to have improved health outcomes. This can be due to the patient’s willingness to adhere to their treatment, as they are involved in their own treatment regimens.
Another is that you can form a much stronger patient-doctor relationship. This is because placing the patient at the forefront of everything you do ensures that the patients feel best supported by you as a doctor, leading to deeper connections.
One reason that is often undermined is the idea that every patient is different. Each patient has their own goals, outlooks and perspectives of their health influenced by numerous external factors from their socioeconomic backgrounds, familial history and their cultural background. Therefore by ensuring that you provide patient-centred care, you are best able to support their specific personal needs.
Next, let’s see how might you be asked about this this in an interview.
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Patient-centred Care Interview Question
There are a number of different ways that you may be asked about patient-centred care during your interviews and MMIs. It is unlikely that you will be asked directly about patient-centred care. However, this does not mean that it cannot be integrated throughout your own interview answers.
For example, if asked about your work experience, you could reflect on how patient-centred care was provided by the doctor throughout the consultation you witnessed or even reflect on an example where patient-centred care is administered in difficult circumstances e.g. when someone does not have capacity. Here’s an example of a simple question you may be asked:
Medicine Interview Question
Why is patient-centred care important in medicine?
Now there’s no correct way to answer this. However, here’s one possible answer:
Model Answer
Patient-centred care is the idea that we as doctors must be the patient at the front of everything we do. This means that no matter how big or small the task we complete, it is important that it is carried out with the intention of supporting that patient.
Now, I really understood the importance of patient-centred care when, during my work experience, a patient was deciding whether they wanted to continue being on birth control despite their symptoms. The doctor throughout this consultation ensured that the patient was the one making the decision, by providing them with information about why they may be experiencing these side effects, as well as the consequences of stopping birth control.
This use of patient-centred care ensured that the patient was at the forefront of the decisions being made and therefore had felt in control of their treatment, ensuring that the patient felt respected and dignified.
Overall, patient-centred care is important as it ensures that the patient feels in control of their own health and therefore leads to stronger patient-doctor relationships.
This was just one way of answering this question, but it allowed for a much more personal reflection as to why patient-centred care is important due to the use of a personal reflection on the topic.
This is generally more desirable than listing off the general benefits patient-centred care has as it shows a deeper understanding of the idea while also demonstrating that you learnt something important during your work experience.
As well as this, having a more personal reflection to refer to strengthens the argument put forward that patient care is needed for a strong patient-doctor relationship.
That covers the important information you need to know about patient-centred care, I hope this guide has been helpful for you! Principles and values like this are crucial to understanding to work within the NHS, so it’s good to get a start on your learning now to be prepared for your Personal Statement and interviews. As well as this, medical ethics is also a key area to study, as you’ll likely be asked at least one ethical question.
To continue your learning, I’d suggest checking out our other medicine interview guides, as we’ve covered everything from the basics to complicated ethical topics. However, is you want more personalised support, consider our Interview Tutoring Bundles or Medicine Mastery Bundles, each of which offers everything you need to succeed in your interviews or full medicine application. You can speak with our team about them today by booking a free consultation.
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