Patient-centred care is the cornerstone of high-quality practice

I read with great interest the article by Michelle Mello (2020) regarding practising personalised care for nursing professionals. As a fifth-year medical student at Imperial College London, I can appreciate the importance of this issue to achieve higher patient satisfaction and, therefore, better treatment outcomes.

I think most of my medical student colleagues would agree that we entered the field envisaging a career of helping patients through challenging experiences. However, the reality is that the physical, psychological and social aspects of the work environment lead to high occupational stress levels among health professionals. This leads to high levels of burnout and turnover, which adversely affect patient care.

To resolve occupational stress in the NHS is complex and will require major modifications in staff levels, working hours and salaries. However, a more achievable step to ensure that health professionals do not lose sight of the importance of delivering care empathetically is regular training on how to deliver personalised care. Mello outlines the ‘universal personalised care’ programme that seeks to develop professional skills and behaviours in 75 000 healthcare staff by 2023/2024. A fundamental part of this programme supports the healthcare system's infrastructure to enable staff to sustain the practice of personalised care.