Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
The results of the evaluation showed that 29 persons developed
plans over the 12 months. Of these all persons involved considered
that person centred planning had increased the quality of life of the
participant. Recommendations mainly centre on the existing
challenges and how to overcome them coupled with strengthening
the facilitating factors.
The impact of the person centred planning study included; services
users having more control (choice and decision making) over the
direction of their lives, increased contact with family members,
increased quality of communication and skills for the service user
and facilitator, increased confidence, increased happiness, increased
use and more appropriate use of departments within the
organisation (i.e. speech and language, social work etc), increase in
use of community services, family members and service users are
more relaxed with this type of planning, the service has become
more person centred, it did not cost a lot, more people know what
being person centred is about.
The main facilitating factors to support the person centred planning
process included; when the service user had strong family support;
when a service user had a facilitator who was really interested in
person centred planning; where managers supported person
centred planning and its activities; participating in support groups
(service user, family and facilitators); and where a good relationship
already existed between the service and family members.
The main challenges were; lack of understanding and necessary
skills to facilitate person centred planning; lack of support by
managers; perceived lack of time; lack of knowledge of advocacy;
lack of accessible information regarding person centred planning;
lack of involvement of community members; and general lack of
understanding of what being person centred means.
The main recommendations included; develop ‘implementation
teams’ in each area to progress person centeredness and planning;
train people in awareness of being person centred; develop
accessible information; link with advocacy groups within and
external to the organisation; involve service users in all levels of
service planning and development
The conclusions are that many challenges exist within the service
when considering implementing person centred planning but the
impact of doing so will increase the quality of lives of the persons
who use that service.
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