Person-centered rehabilitation care and outcomes: A systematic literature review

Despite growing recognition of person-centered care as an essential component of quality care, little is known about how person-centered care can be implemented in the provision of care services and how it is empirically related to outcomes in the rehabilitation settings.

To investigate the extent of implementation of the person-centered care in rehabilitation practices, as well as its effects on relevant outcomes.

Systematic literature review.

Six electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, Scopus, PsycARTICLES, and Cochrane library) were searched for articles published between January 2000 and January 2018.

Based on the inclusion criteria, quantitative studies that examined person-centered rehabilitation interventions and relevant outcomes were included. Study quality assessment, data extraction, and synthesis were performed.

For this systematic review, 17 eligible studies were included and most studies were rated as low-quality. The selected studies were varied concerning the use of the term person-centered care, research design, target population, sample size, setting, intervention, and outcome measures. The most examined interventions in this review were focused on goal setting and shared-decision making processes based on the client-centered approach. The implementation of those interventions varied considerably. Results showed mixed relationships between person-centered care and the outcomes examined in the studies although there was strong evidence regarding the positive effects of person-centered care on occupational performance and rehabilitation satisfaction.

Person-centered care has been increasingly advocated in rehabilitation settings. However, we found that true person-centered care was not fully implemented in rehabilitation practices. Moreover, it appears that person-centered care could positively affect rehabilitation outcomes, such as significant improvements in functional performance and quality of life, however, evidence about these positive effects of person-centered care is not sufficient. More research with rigorous designs is needed.