Patient-satisfaction or person-centred leadership?

We are all engaged with policy that emphasises person-centred care (for example, The Health Care Quality Strategy for NHSScotland). Reflecting on some of my previous posts, and the national focus on care, I am interested in unpicking what we mean by person-centredness when we work with students. Clinical leadership aims to create the conditions where person-centred care can thrive and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement discusses leadership within this context in its bulletin this week (for those who are not signed up to it, I recommend it as a forum where useful discussion and debate takes place). Morag Bisognano is the President and CEO of the Institute (and someone that I have seen present a couple of times - a good example of leadership impacting in practice) and writes in an article, "Perhaps the central questions for leaders are: What really matters to patients and families? Is our organization engaged in patient-centred leadership or patient-satisfaction leadership?" The general thrust of the argument is that when we are focused on achieving 'good' patient satisfaction, we may miss out on the issues that really matter to patients and families and may impact on improvements (where patient-centredness is not also a key driver). Some may feel that this is a matter of semantics, but I believe that the use of words reflects complimentary but differing philosophical perspectives. The measures of satisfaction are usually determined by professionals whereas person-centredness puts the patient (rather obviously) at the centre of any conversation about care. If we help our students to appreciate the need to genuinely listen to patients and families, and enable them to develop the skills to do this, we will push forward person-centredness as the way of being as a health professional.