The patient-centered hospital is still far away: improving research on patient centered medicine in healthcare organizations is a priority It is widely acknowledged that patient centeredness is a key element of healthcare service quality. Despite the numerous theories describing patient centered care, the research outcomes in this field seem still unable to fully describe patients’ overall experiences in the hospital. Studies that focus on the doctor-patient relationship often provide ideal and abstract descriptions of the relationship between patients and care providers, and fail to consider local contingencies and socio-cultural constraints. Organization-oriented studies succeed in identifying the main organizational levers for moving towards patient centered hospitals, but do not explain how health professionals can translate them into their daily activities. Drawing on social research methodology, we offer six proposals that could assist the research on patient centered medicine to approach the complexity of patients’ and practitioners’ experiences: consider the specificities of local contexts; use ethnographic methods; shadow patients and practitioners; engage healthcare organizations in designing the research; use research data to strengthen practitioners’ reflective capacity; and prepare for the organizational change and power shifts that a patient centered approach involves. The proposals provide general guidance for both engaging in collaborative action-learning processes and for supporting organizational innovation that will lead to patient centered hospitals.
