Person-Centred Practice

Overview

Person-centred practice recognises that each person is the expert of their own experience.

This way of thinking is not new. As Hippocrates is often quoted as saying:

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

Person-centred practice means understanding and respecting each individual’s needs, preferences and experiences – and working with them to shape support, rather than having a prescriptive approach.

Support needs should not be defined by diagnosis – Two people with the same diagnosis may have very different support needs, whilst two other people with different (or no) diagnoses may benefit from the same type of support.

Person-centred practice reflects a general move away from a purely medical model, to being informed by a biopsychosocial model approach to providing support.

What this looks like in practice

Person-centred practice means working with the individual to understand their needs and agree what support will help.

In practice, this looks like:

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Understand

  • Ask what helps and what makes things more difficult
  • Listen for needs, not labels
  • Identify early indicators that support needs may be changing

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Collaborate and Support

A person-centred approach involves:

  • Seeing the individual as the expert of their own experience
  • Focussing on needs, not labels
  • Talking with people, not about them
  • Providing clear, accessible information to support informed choice
  • Working in collaboration – making decisions with, not to, the individual
  • Supporting choice and control, while recognising that legal or safety considerations may sometimes apply
  • Taking a whole-person view, including needs, circumstances, preferences, strengths, and values
  • Looking beyond available services – not limiting support to ‘what we offer’

Why this matters

Person-centred practice helps ensure that support is relevant, appropriate and respectful. It is an evidence-based approach which improves outcomes and experience, while supporting people to have more choice, control and autonomy.

WHO: What is people-centred care?, World Health Organisation (WHO)
Duration: 2 minutes 35 seconds

Person-centred care animation NHSLTC 1, NHS Improving Quality
Duration: 2 minutes 35 seconds

Used across many settings

Today, organisations such as the World Health Organization promote people-centred care as a global approach.

In the UK, organisations including NHS England and Care Quality Commission (CQC) emphasise person-centred approaches across health, social care and community services.

It is also increasingly recognised in workplaces, with guidance from Acas, Mind, and the CIPD.

Different terms for the same idea

Different terms can be encountered in different contexts:

  • People-centred / person-centred / patient-centred / relationship-centred / personalisation (health and care)
  • Mutuality (Scotland health and care)
  • Person-led (social care)
  • People-centric / people-first / employee-centric (workplaces)
  • Human-centred (design and innovation)

While the wording varies, the core idea is the same: start with the individual, not the system.

Further Reading and References