DAMMAM: The president of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) in the Middle East wants the Saudi Ministry of Health to propose legislation that will support the establishment of networks of patient-centered care units across the Kingdom to further improve the medical care system in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Nabil Kurashi, the regional president of WONCA, said a patient-centered care unit, which is the core objective of person-centered medicine, is one of the five major concepts of the present-day medical care system, including quality healthcare management, evidence-based medicine, continuing medical education, and medical research. “Because the patient-centered healthcare system is not promoted the way we medical practitioners in this region and in this country wanted, and because many practitioners have only a basic understanding of the concept, the Saudi Ministry of Health therefore has to adopt the concept as a strategy and seek the support, perhaps, of the Shoura Council, to eventually legislate the establishment of these units throughout the Kingdom,” Kurashi said. “It has been found by international medical research that people – the patients – who are sick normally do not know much about their problem; while the physicians and doctors may know all about the patients' problems, including chronic diseases. The main objective of patient-centered medical care is the establishment of a patient-doctor partnership in the treatment of the patients,” Kurashi said. He said doctors should consider their patients as their partners. “Most often, if a doctor asks his patient what kind of medication he or she is taking, ideally the patient should tell the doctor the kind of medication, the dose, the information about his disease because the disease has been with him or her for years; but unfortunately most patients do not have the answers because, sad to say, we still do not have the formula and clear mechanism to deal with the patient as a partner,” Kurashi said. He said the current practice of doctors in interacting with patients is not of much help in establishing what the global medical community calls person-centered medicine. “Patients visit their doctors in their clinic and spend about 15 to 20 minutes; or patients confined in hospital are usually seen by their doctors for a few minutes as the doctors do their rounds of the entire hospital.” “Patient-centered medical care is the concept of promoting the partnership between the patient and the health-care team where patients will be given full information about their disease, including the history of the disease, explanation of the signs and symptoms, results of investigation, how the diagnosis has been reached, whether the patients agree or disagree with the diagnosis, or if they disagree to discuss with the health-care team why they disagree. All the information must be shared with patients,” Kurashi said. He said the idea is for patients to cooperate with the medical team and their doctor, and eventually change their lifestyle, and commit themselves to follow all the instructions that will help them overcome the disease. Kurashi said that as a step forward in setting up patient-centered care units in the Kingdom, the concepts should be promoted in medical schools as part of the integrated medical curriculum, be part of the medical practice, part of the primary health care program, part of the patient-education practice, and part of all the levels of health care specialties like nursing. Kuraishi, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of Dammam, attended the Fourth Geneva Conference on Person-Centered Medicine held in Geneva earlier this month where he presented a paper on the urgent need of adopting patient-centered healthcare in the Mediterranean region. He said the conference recommended the broadening of the engagement of health organizations, academic institutions and experts across the world in implementing person-centered medicine. He said his task now is how to encourage all the hospitals in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf Region, and Middle East countries to promote and adopt the patient-centered system of healthcare in order to encourage partnership between doctors and their patients.
