How Has 'What Matters to You' Been Used for Patient Care? A Scoping Review

Asking patients 'What matters to you?' (WMTY) was first introduced in 2012 as an approach to person-centred care and has since been integrated into healthcare frameworks internationally. However, it is unclear how extensively and successfully it has been used for patient care. This review aimed to identify and synthesise literature on the use of the WMTY initiative for patient care.

The scoping review was guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology. A systematic search of five databases was undertaken using the term 'What matters to you?' and limited to articles published between 2012 and 2023 in English. Primary research studies that used WMTY for patient care were included. Article characteristics, as well as interventions and key findings relevant to WMTY, were extracted. Quantitative data were analysed for descriptive statistics (counts and percentages). Qualitative content analysis was used to identify themes relevant to the aim.

Twenty articles were included in the review. WMTY was used for designing person-centred services, planning individual patient care, and understanding patients and families. Five key themes were identified from findings reported in the articles: (1) What matters to patients?, (2) Benefits of using WMTY, (3) Shortfalls of using WMTY, (4) Facilitators for implementing WMTY and (5) Barriers to implementing WMTY.

WMTY is a simple and versatile tool for supporting person-centred care, with perceived benefits for consumers, users and organisations. Implementation requires understanding of the phrase and consideration of contextual factors.

Consumer representatives were involved in the review of findings, identification of key points for discussion and review of the manuscript.