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PATIENTS’ PERSPECTIVES AND EXPERIENCES OF PATIENT-CENTERED CARE IN SOME COMMUNES OF THUA THIEN HUE PROVINCE

Patient-centered care is widely acknowledged as an important goal in healthcare delivery. Research has demonstrated that patient perceptions of patient-centred care can be linked to clinical and long-term outcomes in addition to being a useful metric for quality improvement efforts.

Objectives: 1) To identify patients’ perspectives and experiences of patient-centerd care in some communes in Thua Thien Hue province; 2) To determine the association between the patients’ perspectives, experiences on patient-centered care and utilization of the health services.

Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study was conducted in 313 patients living in Thua Thien Hue province. A structured questionnaire was use to investigate 4 main domains of patient-centered care: Information and Education, Relationships with doctors and other health professionals, making decisions, motivate patients about self-management. We used test ANOVA to analyze the association between patient-centered care and health care utilization among participants (p < 0.05).

Results: The percentage of good patient-centered care (≥ 3.75 points) was 43.1% (Mean = 3.58 (0.57)). Patients using health services at the commune health centers had a higher experience in patient-centered care compared to district, province and central hospitals (p < 0.005). Domains “Encourage patients to take care of themselves” and “Relationship factor with doctors” were evaluated low. There were statistically significant associations between patient-centered care and primary health care facilities, quality of life utilization of periodic health checkup, and patient activation in health care (p <0.05).

Conclusion: Out study illustrates that patients’ perspectives and experiences of patient-centered care are still low. There is a need to improve communication and counseling skills of health care providers and increase patient motivation for self-care

Key words: patient-centered care, primary care, health care utilization