Special Focus Issue on Patient Centered Orthopaedic Care and Research

We talk a lot about “patient-centered” care, but what does that really look like and how do we put it into practice in orthopaedic surgery? At the Missouri Orthopaedic Institute, we have embarked on programmatic evidence-based shifts in practice to address this fundamental question. The cornerstones for these shifts include:

• An integrated multidisciplinary team approach to whole-patient assessment, education, treatment, and recovery.

• Seeking out and including the patient's voice in determining and implementing best practices for shared decision-making regarding plan of care.

• Identifying and determining ways to mitigate barriers to effective treatment, adherence, and recovery.

• Communicating and supporting the informal caregiver's role in the plan of care.

• Engaging patients as true partners in orthopaedic research.

As you will see when reading the articles in this special focus issue of the Journal of Knee Surgery, these shifts in practice can be very effective for refining indications, fully informing and educating patients and their informal caregivers, synergizing expectations, and improving adherence, outcomes, and satisfaction. In short, this approach can take the “off of ‘“patient-centered”’ care and significantly enhance the impact of our work.

I would like to sincerely thank all of the authors who contributed to this special focus issue who are experts in patient-centered care; their commitment and passion for working hard every day to find better ways to help orthopaedic patients have more successful outcomes is inspiring. I am very grateful to Dr. Sam Franklin for serving as coeditor for this special focus issue and doing all the hard work to get it completed. I would also like to sincerely thank Dr. Jim Stannard for leading this effort at our institution and for supporting the “outside the box” focus for this special issue. Every day, I get to see how this approach is making a positive difference for patients at the University of Missouri and my hope is that these paradigm-shifting articles can inspire and inform our readers' efforts in this arena as well.

Publication History

Article published online:
30 October 2023