Scope of Policy:
This policy applies to all students, faculty and staff members at Penn Dental Medicine.
Policy Statement:
“Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” (The Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine) Patients should be listened to, informed, respected, by creating an environment of patient centered care.
Penn Dental Medicine (PDM) shares this vision and recognizes that systemic health includes the overall mental and physical wellbeing of all patients and their ability to function at his personal best as a member of his/her family, community and society.
To that end our academic and patient care curriculum embraces the individual as a “whole”- understanding the daily challenges they face, appreciating their oral health desires while ensuring that their mental/physical condition is enveloped within the plan of care to assure as optimal an outcome for long term maintenance and sustainability as possible.
Policy
The policy of PDM is to have patient centered care designed, with patient involvement, to ensure timely, convenient, well-coordinated engagement of a person’s health and health care needs, preferences, and values; it includes explicit and partnered determination of patient goals and care options; and it requires ongoing assessment of the care match with patient goals.
The plan of care, which is driven by the patient’s desires and values, cannot be constructed or executed without the patient/family/parent/caregiver’s direct involvement in collaboration with the dental team (faculty, students, and staff) who must explain the care possibilities developed utilizing the best in evidence-based information. The dental team will provide the patient with the requisite information about the risks, benefits and alternatives to the proposed plan of care to engage the patient in clinical decisions (to the extent possible).
