The EFN is committed to support and advocate for strategies and policies placing “patient empowerment” at the centre of people-centred care, seeing patients as persons who are more than their illness. Patient empowerment enables patients and professionals to work in partnership, and nurses play a crucial role in addressing unmet needs.
Patient empowerment is an essential condition for promoting better quality of care, enhanced patient safety and a paramount concept for modernising healthcare systems in the EU. Nurses, through regular sustained direct patient contact, appropriate support, and health coaching, can make a significant contribution to developing patient empowerment in a systematic way, as being part of a culture in value based healthcare systems.
To achieve a culture of patient empowerment, the EFN Members believe there is a need to:
- Optimise patient care through joined decision-making;
- Make patient empowerment a central plank of future European health legislation;
- Develop patient empowerment mechanisms focussing on Cross-European standards;
- Embed patient empowerment within the European education frameworks for health care professionals.
Patient empowerment needs to be a culture within value based healthcare systems to be implemented with the support of an empowered nursing workforce!