Patient-Centeredness, Patient Engagement & Health Care Quality Improvement – A Physician’s Perspective

A guest post by Aanand D. Naik, MD –  Chief, Education and Training Core in Health Services Research at Department of Veterans Affairs, Michael E. DeBakey VAMC and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Houston, Texas.   Reposted from the Blog GeriPal

Improving the health outcomes of older adults with multiple chronic morbidities has been my calling as a physician.  During residency, my colleagues were interested in difficult, rare, or novel cases.  In contrast, I was attracted to the lingering, multiple everyday conditions that older adults faced.  I was also struck by the fact that providing all the recommended screening and treatments for each of their conditions often did more harm than good.

It became immediately clear to me that my role as a clinician was to partner with my patients.  In the end, it was the patient and their family that had to identify health and life…