PATIENT & HEALTH PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES Patient & Professional Perspectives

Quality of care is a massive concern when it comes to healthcare in general. The issue is so multi-dimension and complicated. Even further, there are a lot of ideological bents and perspectives that further shape and form the issue as it exists today. A significant part of the paradigm mentioned above would be the perspectives of both patients and healthcare professionals as it relates to the aforementioned quality of care. Obviously, there are going to be some differences and similarities when talking to any large swath of patients or healthcare providers. The differences could be huge divides in some cases due to what is being expected being too different than what is able to be delivered given the resources or even the perspective or opinion of the healthcare professionals or providers. While there is no simple or neat answer to how to construct and shape a perfect healthcare system, the perspectives of both patients and healthcare providers should point the way.

Perspectives

One treatise on the subject of quality of care perspectives can be found in the work of Campbell et al. (2013) and their words about racial/ethnic perspectives regarding hospice care. Indeed, end-of-life care is something that can be trying and challenging to just about anyone. However, add in any perceived or actual disparities as it relates to racial or ethnic characteristics and there is obviously a large amount of room for conflict and hurt feelings. For example, of black patients and their families continuously and consistently give lower scores on surveys and reviews of care quality than white patients in the same facility, then this is obviously cause for concern. However, a recent survey found that among 743 patients in hospice care, there was not a significant difference between black patients and their opinions about their care quality than that of white patients or other groups. On the other hand, there was a strong linkage between perceived quality of pain management and emotional support regardless of the race or ethnicity of the people or patients involved. However, the words of the results say that there was not a "significant" correlation. This would seem like a bit of a hedge and hopefully does not speak of problems underneath the surface that truly do exist (Campbell et al., 2013).

However, one part of palliative/hospice care that is obviously a little dicier would be that of hope and emotions as compared to what the hard realities are. As ones study put it in their title, "should palliative care patients' hope be truthful, helpful or valuable." The general consensus is that while a good mood and perspective might not change healthcare outcomes on its own, it can still be helpful in improving mental health and willingness to receive care. Even so, it is also generally held that doctors and nurses should not feed the notion that hope exists for recovery or at least an extension of life when some a possibility clearly does not exist. In other words, if someone is clearly terminal and on the verge of death, they need to be told to get their affairs in order or have someone help them do the same as lying to them or giving them false hope is just going to lead to an even nastier outcome. Proper quality of care at that point, regardless of the perspectives of the people involved, should be about minimizing pain and accepting what is to come (Olsman et al., 2014).

Another study that relates to perspectives vs. quality of care can be seen with the caregivers that care for people with eating disorders. Indeed, eating disorders are mental disorders that have obvious and protracted health effects. This could perhaps lead to a drain and effect on the caregivers that care for these patients. It could absolutely hurt and harm their perspective and could even affect their quality of life. Indeed, the study reviewed for this subject, that being Martin et al. (2011), holds that one person in a family having a mental disorder can lead to problems for all of the family members that are exposed to the person that is suffering. Put another way, one person suffering a mental...

Even worse, the caregivers for these mentally ill people can actually contribute to and enable the rituals or problematic behaviors that are in existence. Whether one be talking about nurses, doctors or caregivers, there has to be a tiptoeing when it comes to mental patietns of any stripe and it can be really easy for perspectives to be bent and shaped in ways that are not realistic or helpful to treating the person (Martin et al., 2011).
When it comes to the perspectives of healthcare providers vs. that of patients, there is a buzzword that means entirely different things to the two groups and that would be "efficiency." Indeed, efficiency to a patient would include things like how long it takes to get in for an appointment, how long it takes the doctor to make their assessment and so forth. However, healthcare providers may use those lenses but they would also look at how much money is spent vs. what care ends up happening and how efficient the care was form a dollars perspective. Butala (2010) says that the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has upped the ante and then some (Butala, 2010). Another dimension whereby healthcare quality of care perspectives can differ comes from culture. Groups that commonly see some patterns that are minor to major would include African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, European whites, and some others. One major outlier when it comes to surveying those groups is that racial minorities are much more likely to be concerned and fixated on cultural concerns being addressed as part of their care while white people are less inclined to be concerned about that. Indeed, ethnic and racial minorities often desire a more holistic approach to their care (Bagchi, Ursin & Leonard, 2012).

Another major concern and dimensions of quality of care and its associated perspectives would be perceptions and feelings about things like corruption and inequality. This is sort of a tangent to the racial/ethnic/cultural concerns dynamic just mentioned. However, when it comes to corruption and inequality, even areas like Europe are rife with corruption and inequality. Whether it be the rich getting better care than the poor or whites getting better care than non-whites, it is quite interesting that a continent that is full of socialized medicine frameworks is having such issues when it comes to healthcare differences and perceptions that are based on class, race, ethnicity and social standing in general. Indeed, the consumer perceptions from many in Europe would seem to align with the conflict sociological perspective (Nikoloski & Mossialos, 2013).

When it comes to the perspectives of the healthcare providers themselves, assessing the viewpoints of the healthcare practice facilitator might be useful to many. To that end, one study looked at that in particular and found a few interesting things. For starters, there apparently have not been a lot of studies that look at this particular perspective. To be precise, the definition of "facilitator" is described in this study as being "healthcare professionals who work with and support healthcare providers" (Liddy et al., 2014). Further, the facilitation model is seen as a way to help regular healthcare providers to be more flexible and able to adjust care plans for people when the situation or test results call for it. This leads to improve outcomes, perceptions and perspectives from both patients and standard healthcare professionals alike (Liddy et al., 2014).

An emergence of one trend has greatly changed the healthcare paradigm and that would be the rise of "mHealth," which is a shortened way of saying "mobile health." Indeed, there has been a sharp rise in the amount of people and providers that are involved with healthcare that is done via mobile devices such as phones and tablets. It has especially been helpful in developing countries that do not have the healthcare and other infrastructures that other countries have. Rather than have to rely on a physical location with a staff on site, many people can get their health questions and concerns answered via a mobile phone subscription. Certainly, it is not a replacement for real-life healthcare with a doctor standing alongside a patient. However, it could certainly a stopgap whereby people can get minor to exploratory care and thus improve the perceptions about healthcare options and providers that are in the area or that service the same. It would seem to be a win-win from the perspective of the providers as well as the patients and the quality of care for the patients would probably go up (Motamarri et al., 2014).

Conclusion

As is clear from the eight sources used for this report, there are a lot of layers to the subject of perceptions and opinions about quality of care. The chance that this will ever truly subside without the realization of a world without money,…