Person-centred care

Our Stance

Person-centred care makes people the priority and we strive for a future where all services and support are designed with the needs of the patients who use them in mind. We want healthcare to be informed by what is important to people, and for people and their circumstances to be viewed as unique. 

This is fundamental to improving quality of care and addressing inequalities within care.    

Often, we hear that health and care can feel complex to navigate, fragmented and reactive. We hear that many people using health and care services don’t feel included in decision making about their care or confident that decision makers understand their lives and what is important to them. When care is person centred, it focusses on people’s personal circumstances and strengths, their hopes and ambitions, and ensures people are included in decisions about their health. 

Our Work

Our goal to advocate for person-centred care is a thread that runs through all of our work as an organisation. For example, our influencing work on accessible and inclusive communications within primary care, on supporting emotional health among people living with long-term conditions and our insights work on the unmet needs of people living with health conditions.  

We want to ensure health and care professionals have clear information on the actions they can take to support person centred care. In October 2020 we used insights from 66,000 first-hand testimonies of the pandemic to facilitate the creation of a new set of I Statements, which are simple expressions of how people hope to be treated presented as a straightforward, practical guide for application in health and care settings. 

These statements are used to underpin the work, ethos and values of National Voices to this day. 

Our Asks

1. Listen: Personalised care must start with the individual and listen to what matters to them, what motivates them and what their real concerns are about their health and care. Care plans must be adapted and developed accordingly. 
2. Coordinated approach: From the approximately 1 million people on multiple treatment waiting lists, to those relying on social care and health services, care must wrap around the individual in a way that reduces admin burdens and works to fill the gaps in support that people need.
3. Include: People should be supported to have the role in their care that they want, this includes helping them to better understand their health condition as well as recognising and supporting their ability to self-manage. New policies such as virtual wards and patient-initiated follow-up appointments should be agreed with the individual not forced onto people to meet targets.
4. Trust: Work to build relationships with people and communities so the NHS engages with people on their own terms, meeting people where they live and work.
5. Carers support: Person-centred care should recognise and address the additional needs of the carer/s of that individual with support, such as respite care if appropriate, to be offered to carers to prevent burn-out and/or neglect of their own health. 

Work with us

If this is a topic that is of interest to you and you would like to explore how we might contribute our insights and expertise to your work, we would love to hear from you. We offer consultancy and can design focus groups, roundtables, coaching and workshops to organisations who share our vision for more person-centred and equitable health and care. You can find out more here.

This page was last reviewed in December 2023.