Describe what is meant by a person centred approach
A care home should follow the values of person-centred care. The aims of this approach are to see the person with dementia as an individual, rather than focusing on their illness or on abilities they may have lost. Instead of treating the person as a collection of symptoms and behaviours to be controlled, person-centred care considers the whole person, taking into account each individual's unique qualities, abilities, interests, preferences and needs. Person-centred care also means treating residents with dementia with dignity and respect.
A person-centred approach to providing care and support is as important for people who receive services (and their family or significant others) as it is to staff. The emphasis should always be on the person as an individual as mentioned above. In a person centred approach the unique qualities of the individual as determined by their life history and experiences, likes and dislikes, are their defining characteristics. People with dementia have the same rights as any other person without the illness. Care and support services should build on individual strengths and abilities to maximise and promote independence. Services should enable people to feel valued and safe. The inherent risks of life should be recognised at all times.
A person-centred approach to nursing focuses on the individual’s personal needs, wants, desires and goals so that they become central to the care and nursing process. This can mean putting the person’s needs, as they define them, above those identified as priorities by healthcare professionals. In the words of Bob Price, a nurse academic writing for the Nursing Standard in 2006, ‘the term person-centred care is used…to indicate a strong interest in the patient’s own experience of health, illness, injury or need. It infers that the nurse works with the person’s definition of the situation, as well as that presented through a medical or other diagnosis’....