Strategies for Engaging Families in Treatment

Course overview

Recent research and healthcare reform efforts highlight the central importance of engaging patients and their families in treatment as a key factor in improving patient outcomes. In family-centered care, collaborative relationships between healthcare providers and the patients family members are emphasized for their benefits to quality care. In contrast, lack of engagement of the patient and their family members in treatment is associated with inadequately addressed existing health problems, the emergence of new health issues, treatment complications, medical errors, deaths, disability, and more frequent use of high-cost services such as emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations vs. preventive and routine care. This course will provide an overview of strategies you can use to engage your patients family members in treatment to promote greater follow-through with discharge recommendations from the ED and reduce high utilization of costly treatment approaches.