Healthcare professionals’ views on patient-centered care in hospitals

Background: Patient-centered care (PCC) is a main determinant of care quality. Research has shown that PCC is a multi-dimensional concept, and organizations that provide PCC well report better patient and organizational outcomes. However, little is known about the relative importance of PCC dimensions. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the relative importance of the eight dimensions of PCC according to hospital-based healthcare professionals, and examine whether their viewpoints are determined by context. Methods: Thirty-four healthcare professionals (16 from the geriatrics department, 15 from a surgical intensive care unit, 3 quality employees) working at a large teaching hospital in New York City were interviewed using Q methodology. Participants were asked to rank 35 statements representing eight dimensions of PCC extracted from the literature: patient preferences, physical comfort, coordination of care, emotional support, acce

Exploring Data-Driven Advocacy in Home Health Care Work

This paper explores opportunities and challenges for data-driven advocacy to support home care workers, an often overlooked group of low-wage, frontline health workers. First, we investigate what data to collect and how to collect it in ways that preserve privacy and avoid burdening workers. Second, we examine how workers and advocates could use collected data to strengthen individual and collective advocacy efforts. Our qualitative study with 11 workers and 15 advocates highlights tensions between workers' desires for individual and immediate benefits and advocates' preferences to prioritize more collective and long-term benefits. We also uncover discrepancies between participants' expectations for how data might transform advocacy and their on-the-ground experiences collecting and using real data. Finally, we discuss future directions for data-driven worker advocacy, including combining different kinds of data to ameliorate challenges, leveraging advocates as data stewards, and accounting for workers' and organizations' heterogeneous goals.No Full Tex