Caring in Action: The Patient Care Facilitator Role

Abstract

The downsizing movement left fractures in the healthcare system for patients, nurses, and healthcare providers. To heal the fractures, nurses at the Baptist Hospital of Miami developed the patient care facilitator (PCF), a clinical leadership role for nurses within a smaller area of patient responsibility (12-bed hospital), to provide caring professional nursing practice for both patients and staff. This article describes the multimethod research done to evaluate the impact of the role on continuity of care for patients and caring behaviors of nursing staff. All methods, both qualitative and quantitative, converged and clearly demonstrated the value of the PCF in providing continuity of care from a caring framework.

Nurses' caring and empathy in Jordanian psychiatric hospitals: A national survey

“…One interesting finding in the present study was that nurses with specialized training in psychiatric/mental health nursing were more likely to have a higher level of caring. This finding is supported by Wu et al () and Brown et al (), who found that nurses who were involved in training programmes also had significantly higher scores of caring. There is more than one explanation to clarify this relationship.…”

“…There is more than one explanation to clarify this relationship. First, mental health nurses who participate in specialized psychiatric mental health nursing training might feel they have a strong connection with patients and their families (Brown et al ). Similarly, when there is someone caring for them, patients and families feel personally cared for by nursing staff (Office of the Nursing & Midwifery Services ).…”

The Quest for New Innovative Care Delivery Models

“…Patient care facilitator performance is monitored weekly via a ''dashboard'' of quality, cost, throughput, and satisfaction measures. 3 In addition to achieving aggressive throughput and early discharge targets, Baptist placed more than 80% of clinical core outcome measures in the top 10% nationally. Baptist is currently building a new 96-bed hospital based on the 12-Bed Hospital Model.…”