Person-centred care in practice

Person-centred care is a prominent concept in healthcare and radiography¹ but it is less obvious what this means in practice². The patient experience literature in radiotherapy is predominantly about the impacts of radiation during and after treatment and related informational needs. A smaller body of work considers therapeutic radiography as a sociotechnical system, where the patient experience is formed by interpersonal interactions with the radiographer and the treatment environment^3-7. Published accounts of the direct patient experience, which embrace the potential for mutual misunderstandings or lack of connection attendant in radiotherapy treatment, are rarer still⁸.

Data from National Cancer Patient Experience Surveys (NCPES) suggest high levels of overall satisfaction with cancer services^{9, 10} and radiotherapy services^{11, 12}. Population-level data, however, tends to generate more positive responses than in-depth exploration of specific experiential events and...