Principles of patient-centred care and barriers to their implementation: a case study of breast reconstruction in Australia.

purpose"Patient-centred care" is widely promoted as an ideal goal of health care systems, but is often difficult to achieve in practice. This article has three aims: to develop an original set of generalisable patient-centred care principles (PCCPs); to identify barriers to the implementation of these principles in a real-world setting, using breast reconstruction (BR) services in Australia as a case study; and to document examples of successful patient-centred care in relation to BR.

methodsSemi-structured interviews (n = 90) were conducted with 31 breast and plastic reconstructive surgeons, 37 breast cancer health professionals and 22 women who underwent mastectomy as part of their breast cancer treatment and were dissatisfied with their BR experiences.

resultsTen broad PCCPs were derived from our participant interviews. These principles comprised the following: maximising patient choice, access to services, patient and family support and appropriateness of information; minimising patient costs and physical and psychosocial morbidity; and facilitating informed decision-making, interdisciplinary patient management and evidence-informed practice. While the major barriers to the implementation of these PCCPs in relation to BR were resource driven, surgeon-related factors were also identified.

conclusionsThese PCCPs highlight areas of need but also provide examples of high quality patient-centred care. They may help to guide a national discussion about minimum standards of BR practice, while allowing for some necessary regional and cultural variation. They also have the potential to be applied more widely to the provision of a range of health services within Australia or internationally.