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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Med Care. 2016 Jul;54(7):697–705. doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000000548

Table 4.

Recommendations and Resources to Facilitate Patient and Family Engagement across Various Levels of Care

Recommendations
1. Ask patients and families what “engagement” means to them and what aspect of engagement matters most to them.
2. Explicitly invite and welcome family presence at medical visits, if the patient prefers, and provide patients and families with evidence-based strategies that have been shown to enhance patient-provider communication.
3. Include patient and family advisors in design and implementation of research, interpretation, and dissemination of research findings, after proper training.
4. Train future members of the health care workforce (physicians, nurses, social workers, medical assistants, administrative staff) in principles of PFE and set the expectation (e.g., include it as part of formal job descriptions) that excellence in PFE is a requirement of the job.
5. Assess the level of engagement of patient and families in shared decision making, care planning, transition planning, all aspects of community partnering, and patient /family care experience and continually engage in QI around patient/family engagement to give feedback on clinical experience and ideas to providers and clinical practices.
6. To encourage patient engagement in decision making, consider asking the following 2 questions: a) What are you worried about?; b) What are your goals following treatment?77
Resources

  1. AHRQ Quality Improvement Guide79 (https://cahps.ahrq.gov/quality-improvement/improvement-guide/improvement-guide.html) – offers information on how to use patient experience data in quality improvement.

  2. Planetree and Picker Institute’s Patient-Centered Care Improvement Guide80 – offers strategies to engage patients in quality improvement activities.

  3. Institute for Patient and Family-Centered Care81 (http://www.ipfcc.org/tools/downloads-tools.html) – provides numerous resources and tools related to collaborating with patients and families.

  4. National Center for Medical Home Implementation’s Positioning the Family and Patient at the Center Guide30 - a comprehensive monograph including relevant research, tools to support partnership, and examples of best practices of such partnerships from pediatric practices across the country

  5. National Patient Safety Foundation Partnership for Clear Healthcare Communication’s Ask Me 3 TM82 (http://www.npsf.org/default.asp?page=askme3)- an educational program designed to improve patient-provider communication and patient engagement by guiding patients to ask questions meant to give the care provider essential information used in diagnostic decision making.

  6. The Joint Commission’s “Speak Up” Patient Safety Program83 (http://www.jointcommission.org/speakup.aspx) - provides free online access to infographics, animated videos, brochures, and posters designed to increase patient safety through patient engagement.

  7. American Academy of Nursing Action Brief on Patient Engagement84 – offers recommendations to enhance engagement in practice, research, education, and policy.

  8. Guide to Patient and Family Engagement: Environmental Scan Report7 – defines engagement and promotes PFE in hospital settings.

  9. AHRQ Patient and Family Engagement Module85 – focuses on PFE in the hospital setting

  10. American Hospital Association’s framework on Engaging Health Care Users5 – offers best practices of PFE strategies for health care teams in hospitals.

  11. Center for Advancing Health’s framework on Engagement Behavior86 – suggests 43 engagement behaviors for patients.

  12. The Joint Commission’s Roadmap for Hospitals87 – a guide for engaging patients in hospitals

  13. US Department of Health and Human Services/Health Care Information and Management Systems Society’s Patient Engagement Framework88 – promotes the use of eHealth tools in the development of PFE strategies.

  14. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation PFE Toolkit89 – presents PFE strategies of primary care practices

  15. Kemper’s “Engaging Patients and Families in System-Level Improvement”70 – provides a framework to assess patient and family engagement and practical steps and strategies aimed to improve engagement at the organizational/system level.

  16. Hibbard’s “The Dos and Don’ts of Patient Engagement in Busy Office Practices”90 – provides a summary of strategies providers can use to facilitate patient engagement and strategies that should be avoided.

  17. American Academy of Pediatrics Residency Education Work Group has developed Medical Home Modules for Pediatric Residency Education including one on patient and family engagement available for use https://www.aap.org/en-us/professional-resources/practice-support/medicalhome/Pages/home.aspx91

  18. Carman’s “A Roadmap for Patient and Family Engagement in Healthcare Practice and Research”92 (http://patientfamilyengagement.org/#sthash.UvS7WsfG.dpuf) provides a wealth of knowledge and evidence related to PFE as well as opportunities to improve engagement.