Evaluating family-centred care at BC Children's Hospital: Healthcare providers' perspectives

Abstract

Background: Family-centred care (FCC) emphasizes a partnership approach to care between healthcare providers (HCPs), patients, and families. FCC provides significant benefits to both children and families; however, challenges exist in implementing FCC into practice. This study aimed to explore HCPs' FCC behaviours in multidisciplinary specialty clinics at a tertiary pediatric health care center in Canada.

Methods: A demographic survey and the Measure of Processes of Care for Service Providers (MPOC-SP) questionnaire was administered to HCPs in five specialty clinics: orthopaedics, neurology, multi-organ transplant, immunology, and nephrology. Survey data were summarized using descriptive statistics. The association between possible predictor variables (ethnicity, gender, years in clinical practice) and MPOC-SP scores were analysed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by post-hoc Tukey's test. Differences in scores across professional disciplines were analysed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) followed by ANOVA. Items rated lower (1-4 out of 7 by >33% of participants) were identified as potential areas for improvement.

Results: HCPs (N = 77) from all five clinics rated the MPOC-SP domain 'Treating People Respectfully' the highest (mean 6.00 ± 0.59) and 'Providing General Information' the lowest (mean 4.56 ± 1.27). HCPs with 5-10 years of experience had higher scores across all domains compared to HCPs with <5 years and >10 years of experience. There were no significant differences in scores based on ethnicity, gender, and professional discipline. Items rated lower (1-4 out of 7 by >33% of participants) involved providing general information and emotional support to families.

Conclusions: Providing general information and emotional support to patients and families are areas for improvement for all specialty clinics surveyed. Given genetic counsellors (GCs) expertise in education and counselling, GC integration in these clinics is one way in which FCC can be improved. Our study also shows that years of work experience influences HCPs' capacity to provide FCC.

Keywords: MPOC‐SP; family‐centred care; multidisciplinary; paediatric.