Background: Demonstrating safe, effective, person-centred practice is a constant challenge for health and social care practitioners. A framework has been developed to highlight the values underpinning person-centred practice in terms of the actions required, the positive outcomes and the risks should person-centred practice not be achieved.

Aims and objectives: To analyse the process of developing a framework for person-centred practice using Mezirow’s critical reflection; to demonstrate our learning during this development and to share the findings with others.

Conclusion: Enabling practitioners to participate in the validation process highlighted the importance of listening to others rather than imposing our own experience. Changing our approach demonstrated an improved process with the potential for further development of person-centred practice in health and social care settings.

Implications for practice:

• Healthcare leaders should consider this participatory approach as an innovative way to improve understanding of the experience of person-centred practice
• Finding time in the workplace to experience person-centred practice is an essential part of enabling individuals, teams and organisations to develop a better understanding of working together to improve the experience of care
• This approach to facilitation, reflection, action and analysis can be applied by others in different health and social care contexts

This article by Jane Christie and Jane Camp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.