Journal of General Internal Medicine Article: Guiding Age-Friendly Care Through “What Matters” - Restoring the Whole Person Back into Clinical Practice
The Journal of General Internal Medicine has published an article titled "Guiding Age-Friendly Care Through 'What Matters': Restoring the Whole Person Back into Clinical Practice." JAHF's Jane Carmody co-authored the article.
The authors - Katherine C. Ritchey, Angela Catic, Lee Jennings, Marcia Mecca, Jane Carmody and Aanand D. Naik - demonstrate an approach to caring for older adults with multiple chronic conditions using the evidence-based Patient Priorities Care (PPC) and the Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms Framework: What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility. They explain that clinical practice guidelines based only on single-disease research are not designed to meet the needs of this population. Asking older adults "what matters" to them is a foundational component of age-friendly care, but specific training in priorities identification is needed for patients with complex conditions.
"Engaging patients in what matters conversations and grounding decisions through the PPC approach provides clarity in the face of uncertainty," the authors write, adding that it is a "north star" for alignment with the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement.
An article by Baylor College of Medicine, "Eliciting and Acting on “What Matters” as the Foundation for Age-Friendly, Person-Centered Care," talks about the paper and discusses the patient-centered care approach.
Read the article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Read the related article from Baylor College of Medicine.
Learn more about the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative.
Learn more about Patient Priorities Care.
Learn more about JAHF's co-support of Patient Priorities Care and of the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative.
