A scoping review of person-centred care strategies used in diagnostic Nuclear Medicine

Abstract

Introduction: Person-centred care (PCC) emphasises the need for the health care professional to prioritiseindividual patient needs, thereby fostering a collaborative and emphatic environment that empowerspatients to actively participate in their own care. This article will explore the purpose of PCC inNuclear Medicine (NM), while discussing strategies that may be used to implement PCC during diagnosticNM examinations performed on adult patients.Methods: The scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology.The search was performed on PubMed, Embase and Cinhal in June 2023 and included studies inEnglish, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. The research equation combined keywords and Medical SubjectHeading terms (MeSH) related to person-centred care (PCC), for all types of nuclear medicine diagnosticexaminations performed. Three independent review authors screened all abstracts and titles, and alleligible full-text publications were included in this scoping review.Results: Fifty-three articles, published between 1993 and 2022, met the inclusion criteria for this scopingreview. Seven articles were published in 2015 while 56.6 % of all included studies were performed inEurope. Most studies (n ¼ 39/53) focused on the patients only, with the identified patient benefits being:improve patient experience (67.9 %), increase patient comfort (13.2 %), increase patient knowledge(5.7 %), reduction of patient anxiety (9.4 %) and reduction of waiting/scan time (3.8 %).Conclusion: The scoping review identified a lack of research investigating the use of person-centred carestrategies in NM. Future research will focus on using an international survey to explore this topic innuclear medicine departments overseas.Implications for practice: By applying PCC principles, the NM professional can improve the patient carepathway and increase patient satisfaction, leading to enhanced clinical outcomes.