New Policy Statement: Patient- and Family-Centered Care and the Pediatrician's Role

The Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care collaborated with the Committee on Hospital Care of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in releasing the Patient- and Family-Centered Care and the Pediatrician's Role. This revised AAP policy statement, co-written by Jerrold Eichner, MD, FAAP, Chair of the AAP Committee on Hospital Care 2007-2011, and Beverley Johnson, President and CEO of the Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care, provides recommendations to promote patient- and family-centered care "throughout the health care system, including education of professionals, health care systems planning and facility design, and research."

The Academy first adopted a policy statement on Family-Centered Care and the Pediatrician's Role in 2003, and reaffirmed this Policy Statement in May 2007. An important difference in this 2012 revised policy statement is that the term family-centered care is replaced with the term "patient- and family-centered care," to "more explicitly capture the importance of engaging the family and the patient in a developmentally supportive manner as essential members of the health care team." This term recognizes that the "family is the child's primary source of strength and support and that the child's and the family's perspectives and information are important in clinical decision-making." This revised policy statement "specifically defines the expectation of patient- and family-centered care."

The statement draws on several decades of work with families, pediatricians, other health care professionals, and policy makers to define patient- and family-centered care, outline its core principles, recount the history of patient- and family-centered care, and summarize some of the recent literature linking it with improved heath outcomes and other benefits. For example, the research cited indicates that patient- and family-centered care results in improved quality of care and patient safety, reduced health care costs, more effective use of health care resources, improved experience of care, and improved satisfaction for the patient, family, staff, and pediatrician.