WIHI: Realizing “What Matters” (to Patients and Families)

Date: January 14, 2016

Featuring:

• Beth Hennessey, RN, MSN, Executive Director of Integrated Care Management, Sutter Center for Integrated Care
• Paula Suter, RN, MA, Director of Clinical Care, Sutter Center for Integrated Care
• Geraldine Marsh, Improvement Advisor for Older People’s Care, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Healthcare Improvement Scotland
• Jennifer Rodgers, Chief Nurse, Pediatrics and Neonates, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Healthcare Improvement Scotland
• Christina Gunther-Murphy, Executive Director, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

A few years ago, IHI and others began suggesting to providers that instead of routinely asking patients “What’s the matter with you?” they should begin asking “What matters to you?” Ever since, many have been struck by the richness and the value of what they learn when they ask this apparently simple question. So much so, champions of this concept in the improvement community are now working hard to spread the practice. And they’re demonstrating how to reliably embed it into routine habits of providing more patient-centered care.
 
IHI has been tracking these developments, and we’d like to share what we’re finding out with this WIHI. We headed out to the West Coast of the US (Sutter Health) and across the pond (NHS Scotland) for terrific examples of what’s possible when clinicians are genuinely curious about a patient’s priorities at any single encounter, over the course of an illness, or when dealing with a chronic disease.

 

Read the related blog post: A Simple Question to Put Patients in the Driver's Seat