Patient- and Family-Centered Care: It's Not Just for Pediatrics Anymore.

Patientand family-centered care (PFCC) is changing the way hospitals provide patient care, increasing staff satisfaction, decreasing costs, and improving patient outcomes [1, 2]. Although hospitals make unique, organization-specific PFCC principles, all of them tend to endorse similar core values by recognizing the importance of family members’ roles in individual patients’ health care experience, establishing relationships with and supporting patients and families, and helping patients discover how their own strengths and weaknesses influence their health and health care. When patients’ needs are prioritized, they engage in treatment and the treatments are more effective [1-4]. Hospitals where PFCC is part of the organizational culture find not only that patient, family, and staff satisfaction ratings significantly increase, but also that patients’ health outcomes improve [2, 5]. Implementation of PFCC is also correlated with a decrease in patients’ emergency department visits, faster recovery, and decreased utilization of health care resources [2, 6-7].